HPV test beats Pap in detecting cervical cancer

Study: HPV test beats Pap in detecting cervical cancer

A new study led by McGill University researchers shows that the human papillomavirus (HPV) screening test is far more accurate than the traditional Pap test in detecting cervical cancer. The first round of the Canadian Cervical Cancer Screening Trial (CCCaST), led by Dr. Eduardo Franco, Director of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology at McGill's Faculty of Medicine, concluded that the HPV test's ability to accurately detect pre-cancerous lesions without generating false negatives was 94.6%, as opposed to 55.4% for the Pap test.
The results of the study, first-authored by Dr. Franco’s former McGill PhD student Dr. Marie-Hélène Mayrand of the Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal (CHUM), with colleagues from McGill, Université de Montréal, the Newfoundland and Labrador Public Health Laboratory and McMaster University, are published in the October 18 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.