Human papillomavirus testing for primary cervical cancer screening

Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women worldwide and the seventh most common cause of cancer deaths in women in Europe. Today, we know how to prevent almost every case of this disease; organized cervical cancer screening based on the Papanicolaou or Pap smear has been proven to prevent 80% of cervical cancer deaths, while new technologies for the detection of the human papillomavirus (HPV) or the prevention of HPV infection offer the potential to make even more progress in the battle against this disease. Testing for carcinogenic or high-risk HPV types is gaining acceptance for the triage of women with borderline cytology and for follow-up after treatment of high-grade cervical lesions. Now, a number of large-scale randomized controlled trials have shown that HPV testing as a primary screening test can detect approximately 50% more high-grade lesions than the Pap test, albeit with a lower specificity if all HPV-positive women are followed up. However, alternative screening algorithms in which HPV-positive women are triaged with cytology have been shown to have equivalent specificity to the Pap test without compromising the increased sensitivity. Further advantages of HPV testing come from the fact that it is an objective and automatable test with a dichotomous result. These attributes can yield cost savings through reductions in staff numbers and simplification of quality control procedures while reducing turnaround times. in countries seeking to improve cervical cancer prevention, the implementation of HPV testing as the primary screening test with cytology for the triage of HPV-positive women is an option that should be fully evaluated. This review summarizes the recent advances in HPV testing in cervical cancer prevention.