| Liquid Based Cytology | |
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Papanicolau method, known as Pap-Test, still represents the most common way for smearing uterine cervix
cells onto a slide and then screening them. Several limitations of this conventional smear can be identified as: - lack of the most of the cellular material during the smearing; - inadequate slide due to sampling mistake (e.g. lack of endocervical material); - inadequate slide due to smearing mistake (e.g. not enough cellular material or, on the contrary, overlapping of cells); - bad cellular preservation due to drying process, bad fixing onto the slide; - presence of obscuring blood, inflammatory material; - difficult screening due to bad quality of smear; - recalling of the patient in case of inadequate slide. In this direction, since few years ago, alternative methods have been developed to address the limitation of conventional Pap smear. The most innovative way of preparing samples for cytological examinations in the laboratory is the Liquid-Based Cytology (LBC). Liquid-based cytology is a new method of preparing cervical samples for cytological examination. Unlike the conventional ‘smear’ preparation, it involves making a suspension of cells from the sample, in a preservative solution, and this is used to produce a mono layer (or thin layer) of cells on a slide. In this kind of procedures the organic liquid to be investigated is settled on the glass microscope slide only after a preparatory procedure instead of the standard smearing deposition, proper of the conventional method. Current studies are finding that these slide preparation techniques bring several advantages as: - the entire collected sample is captured in the preservative vial which leads to a more representative smear being prepared; - reduction of the number of slides rated as unsatisfactory, inadequate for problems during sampling, smearing, preparation; - increasing of the examination sensitivity; - improving in the slides quality (mono layer or thin layer cellular deposition) that allows a concrete reduction of the specimen interpretation times; - the material that is left over after a smear has been prepared, can be used for adjunctive testing (as HPV detection), without having to recall the patient, saving the patient time and trouble; - only standardized LBC smears may be initially subjected to image analysis. |
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