{"id":11333,"date":"2024-08-15T15:53:56","date_gmt":"2024-08-15T15:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=11333"},"modified":"2024-08-15T16:22:58","modified_gmt":"2024-08-15T16:22:58","slug":"an-alternative-to-pap-smears-is-here-no-speculum-required","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=11333","title":{"rendered":"An Alternative to Pap Smears is Here, No Speculum Required"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Starting this fall, women will be able to use a simple swab to screen for cervical cancer. The method offers an alternative to a procedure that many dread \u2014 and promises to address disparities in who develops the disease.<\/p>\n

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For some women, getting a Pap smear is hell.<\/p>\n

Since her early twenties, Kevinn Poree has suffered from chronic vaginal pain \u2014 pain that led her to scream in agony the first time a gynecologist tried to insert a speculum.<\/p>\n

\u201cI completely lost it,\u201d Ms. Poree, 38, said. After the speculum was removed, she started \u201ccrying in the fetal position.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ever since, like many women, she has dreaded the cervical cancer screening test, which requires a patient\u2019s legs to be held apart with stirrups and a cold metal device to be inserted vaginally, while a physician scrapes cells from the cervix.<\/p>\n

Even when acute pain isn\u2019t an issue, research suggests<\/a> that, for many, Pap smears are<\/a> uncomfortable<\/a>, for a complex set of physical and emotional reasons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThere are people who experience distress,\u201d due to fear or embarrassment or a history of sexual trauma, said Karen Knudsen, the chief executive of the American Cancer Society.<\/p>\n

Now, a handful of health care companies are preparing to introduce a new model for cervical cancer screening and prevention that would circumvent the speculum: self-collection, in which a woman swabs her vagina in the doctor\u2019s office, using only a narrow swab that looks similar to the one used during a Covid test. Once the sample is collected, a lab would test it for the strains of human papillomavirus, or HPV, most likely to cause cervical cancer.<\/p>\n

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Starting this fall, women will be able to use a simple swab to screen for cervical cancer. The method offers an alternative to a procedure that many dread \u2014 and promises to address disparities in who develops the disease.For some women, getting a Pap smear is hell.Since her early twenties, Kevinn Poree has suffered from chronic vaginal pain \u2014 pain that led her to scream in agony the first time a gynecologist tried to insert a speculum.\u201cI completely lost it,\u201d Ms. Poree, 38, said. After the speculum was removed, she started \u201ccrying in the fetal position.\u201dEver since, like many women, she has dreaded the cervical cancer screening test, which requires a patient\u2019s legs to be held apart with stirrups and a cold metal device to be inserted vaginally, while a physician scrapes cells from the cervix.Even when acute pain isn\u2019t an issue, research suggests that, for many, Pap smears are uncomfortable, for a complex set of physical and emotional reasons.\u201cThere are people who experience distress,\u201d due to fear or embarrassment or a history of sexual trauma, said Karen Knudsen, the chief executive of the American Cancer Society.Now, a handful of health care companies are preparing to introduce a new model for cervical cancer screening and prevention that would circumvent the speculum: self-collection, in which a woman swabs her vagina in the doctor\u2019s office, using only a narrow swab that looks similar to the one used during a Covid test. Once the sample is collected, a lab would test it for the strains of human papillomavirus, or HPV, most likely to cause cervical cancer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11335,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11333"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11336,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11333\/revisions\/11336"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}