Utility of routine cytology in detecting asymptomatic cervical cancer recurrence

The objective of this study was to examine the utility of routine cervical cytology after cervical cancer treatment. We performed a retrospective study from 2004 to 2020, which identified 581 cervical cancer patients. Of the 581 patients, 233 were included in the analysis. The remaining 348 were excluded because of failure to enter the surveillance period, loss to follow-up, or treatment at an outside facility. The continuous data were summarized using the median and interquartile range for non-normally distributed data. The categorical data were summarized using frequencies and proportions. Comparisons between the categorical data were performed using the Fisher exact test. Of the 233 included patients, 78 (33.5%) had had ≥1 abnormal Papanicolaou (Pap) test during surveillance. Of these 78 patients, 22 (28.2%) underwent biopsy, with all biopsies negative for malignancy. Local recurrence was identified in 15 patients. Of these 15 patients, 14 (93.3%) were symptomatic at diagnosis, 7 (46.7%) had had visible disease on the physical examination, and 6 (40.0%) had normal cytology findings throughout surveillance. Only 1 case of local, asymptomatic cervical cancer recurrence was detected by Pap test alone. A subset analysis was performed to compare the rate of abnormal Pap tests between the radiation therapy and non-radiation therapy groups. Of the 233 patients, 154 (66.1%) underwent primary radiation therapy, 64 (41.6%) of whom had abnormal cytology during surveillance. Of 82 patients who did not undergo radiation therapy, only 14 (17.1%) had had abnormal cytology (P < 0.01). None of the patients in either group had underlying recurrent disease at the time of abnormal cytology. The results of our study show that routine Pap tests have limited clinical utility in the surveillance of cervical cancer recurrence. Consideration should be given to removing routine cytology from the surveillance recommendations. •Cervical cancer recurrence is usually detected by symptomatology or physical exam findings.•Pap tests are more likely to be falsely abnormal in patients who have received radiation therapy.•Routine cervical or vaginal cytology following cervical cancer treatment has little to no clinical utility.