Those of us involved in the healthcare of women have seen a remarkable transformation in screening techniques for cervical cancer and its precursors since the mid 1990s. The staid old Pap smear technique of scraping cells from the cervix with a wooden spatula and cotton-tipped applicator and smearing them onto a glass slide is a thing of the past in most practices. We now use plastic collection devices to transfer cells from the cervix into a preservative which is sent to the lab for liquidbased cytology and reflex human papillomavirus (HPV) testing. The work of the cytotechnologist is often assisted and in some cases, replaced by electronic.
