Women who have had hysterectomies for some reason other than cancer don’t need Pap smears anymore, a study found.
Pap smears are used to check for signs of cancer, primarily in the cervix but also in the uterus or vagina. But in hysterectomies, the uterus and cervix are removed, and vaginal cancer is extremely rare and can be detected visually.
“The use of the Pap smear after hysterectomy for benign disease should become a thing of the past,” Dr. Kenneth Noller wrote in an editorial accompanying the study, published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
That could eliminate nearly one-third of the 50 million to 60 million Pap smears given each year, saving hundreds of millions of dollars annually, said Dr. Thomas Nolan of Louisiana State University Medical Center, lead author of the study.
A Pap smear, in which cells are swabbed from the genital canal and put under a microscope, costs $20 to $30. Currently, Pap smears are recommended every one to three years, even for women who have had hysterectomies for reasons other than cancer, such as fibroid tumors or endometriosis, a painful growth of the uterine lining.
