A specimen preparation technique for automated cervical cancer screening and its assessment

Abstract

In order to obtain good specimens suitable for automated cervical cancer screening, cervical scrapings of 147 cases including 13 cancer and 134 non-cancer ones were suspended in a saline solution. Specimens were made by the method previously reported. Those of 102 cases (69%) were suitable for automated cytology containing sufficiently dispersed cells without cellular clumps, excessive number of polymorphonuclear leukocytes or erythrocyte debris.
Next to examine cell loss and cell recovery during preparation, cancer and/or atypical cells in a pretreated specimen and the corresponding routine cervical one were counted up to 30 cells in total. Specimens containing more than that were regarded as the “same” in number. There were 64 cases (63%), which contained more or the “same” number of cancer and/or atypical cells, whereas the rest, 38 cases (37%), did less number of those cells. This fact must be taken into consideration for automated cancer cytology.