Influence of adequacy of the sample on detection of the precursor lesions of the cervical cancer

to evaluate whether the sample adequacy influences the detection of precursor cervical cancer lesions. a transversal study from January 2004 to December 2005. A number of 10,951 results of cervical cytopathological exams from users of the National Health System (Sistema Unico de Saúde, SUS) in Goiânia, Goiás , Brazil, was studied. These women had spontaneously looked for the services from the Family Health Program or from the Basic Units of Health. Samples were collected by medical doctors and nurses, through the conventional technique to detect cervical cancer. The analyzed smears were classified by the Bethesda System, the sample adequacy being defined along the routine screening and categorized as: satisfactory, satisfactory but presenting factors that might partially jeopardize the analysis, and unsatisfactory. Results were stored in the Epi-Info 3.3.2 program. The chi2 test was used to compare altered results with the adequacy of the samples from cytopathological smears. Differences with probability of rejection of the null hypothesis lower than 5% (p