Concerns HPV testing could miss rare cancers
The revamped cervical screening program does not include some increasingly prevalent HPV subtypes
Gynaecologists have flagged concerns that the switch to HPV DNA-based cervical screening means some rare cases of cancer or pre-cancerous lesions could be missed.
They have published a case series of three asymptomatic Australian women who returned negative HPV test results despite having high-grade abnormalities detected on cytology. Two cases were later found to be positive for HPV 53, classed as a ‘probable’ oncogenic subtype by WHO.