title: Quality assurance in cervical smears: 100% rapid rescreening vs. 10% random rescreening.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To compare 100% rapid rescreening of cervical smears with 10% random rescreening as a method of quality assurance.
  
  
  METHODS
  A total of 5215 smears, randomly selected from smears reported as negative by cytotechnologists during routine screening, underwent 100% rapid rescreening by senior cytotechnologists. Ten percent of these smears, selected at random, were rescreened by other senior cytotechnologists. The gold standard was defined by cytopathologists, who rescreened all 5215 smears. After excluding unsatisfactory smears detected by cytopathologists, 4271 were included in the analysis.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The 100% rapid rescreening method identified 69.9%, 95.7% and 100%, respectively, of atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance, low grade squamous intraepithelial lesion and high grade squamous intraepithelial lesion cases reported by the cytopathologists. The 100% rapid rescreening method showed a sensitivity of 73.5% and specificity of 98.6%. The 10% rescreening method showed sensitivity of 40.9% and specificity of 98.8%.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  One hundred percent rapid rescreening is an efficient method of internal quality assurance in cervical smear diagnosis. It can reduce the false negative rate and therefore can provide greater certainty to women who have received negative results. Well-trained cytotechnologists are able to identify abnormal smears in 1-minute rapid rescreening.
authors.affiliation: School of Pharmacy, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil.
authors.forename: Rita Goreti
authors.initials: RG
authors.lastname: Amaral
authors.forename: Luiz Carlos
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Zeferino
authors.forename: Ellen
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Hardy
authors.forename: Maria Cristina do Amaral
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Westin
authors.forename: Edson Zangiacomi
authors.initials: EZ
authors.lastname: Martinez
authors.forename: Eliana Borin
authors.initials: EB
authors.lastname: Montemor
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008403:Mass Screening; D011786:Quality Control; D002583:Uterine Cervical Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology; D014626:Vaginal Smears / Q000592:standards*