Thirty years of colposcopic studies: Validity of local destructive treatments Panama 1982-2012

Abstract

Since our intention was to verify the effectiveness of local destructive treatments which were applied to patients with oncogenic risk due to their cervical pathology, we followed 396 patients during 30 years. These treatments were applied almost immediately after the initial diagnosis was made.

The evaluated parameters were the pathology type, the type of treatment, patients’ evolution, and the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) results. The latter is a molecular biology test which was applied to 119 cases between 2011 and 2012, this was introduced as a type of quality control and a way to confirm whether patients were actually healed or improved. With regards to the PCR results, even if the patient was considered to be cured or improved, only 5 of 119 cases were negative, and among those that resulted positive, most of them were HR-HPV, being these 31, 18, 35 and 16. The final result of the study indicates 82% of the patients were healed; 8.3% persisted with their condition; 4.8% improved; 2.8% recurred and only one case progressed, being this only 0.2%.