What is a cervical smear?

Cervical smear is obtained from cervical epithelial cells by scraping, and a clinicopathological diagnosis can be made based on abnormalities in cell nuclear pattern and structure and changes in cytoplasm. It is an important method for early screening of cervical cancer. The method is to use a wooden scraper to gently scrape 1 week at the junction of squamous columnar epithelium at the ectocervix with the ectocervix as the center of the circle. If there is excessive leucorrhea, it should be gently swabbed away with a dry cotton swab before scraping the specimen. The scrapings are made into smears and fixed in alcohol. The grading standard for cell diagnosis is widely used in a five-grade method. Grade I: normal cells, a normal vaginal cell smear, benign. Grade II: cells with generally enlarged nuclei, lightly stained or with double nuclei, sometimes with more chromatin, mostly seen when inflammation is present. Grade III: suspicious cancer, mainly seen with enlarged nuclei, irregular or binucleated nuclei, deepened staining, which is called nuclear heterogeneity, with little change in nuclear plasma ratio, mostly seen in atypical hyperplasia. Grade IV: Highly suspicious cancer, with large deep staining nucleus, irregular karyotype, coarse nuclear chromatin particles, uneven distribution, little cytoplasm, and possible carcinoma in situ. Grade V: cancer with typical features of cancer cells and large amount, with the possibility of infiltrating carcinoma. Traditional cervical smear is now gradually replaced by liquid-based thin-layer cytology test TCT, which is a more advanced cervical cancer cytology examination technique in the international arena. Compared with traditional cervical smear Pap smear, it obviously improves the satisfactory rate of specimens and the detection rate of abnormal cells in the cervix.