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Cervical screening and anxiety - an overlooked and unintended consequence

HRB-funded researchers at the National Cancer Registry identify the need for a standardised approach that assesses psychological distress among women following cervical screening.

Every year almost 15,000 women in Ireland who attend cervical screening, receive abnormal test results. The psychological impact of an abnormal result is well recognised, with raised anxiety levels for women relating to future fertility, cervical cancer and having sex.

Dr Mairead O'Connor, lead author on the paper and a HRB Research Fellow, said 

'Cervical Screening is a positive and preventative intervention to reduce the incidence of cervical cancer. However, we found that psychological burden is an important, and often overlooked, cost of cervical screening programmes that requires further investigation'.

Mairead added,

'We did an in-depth review of all existing research to see if we could identify what might be the adverse psychological outcomes, whether there are any predictors of these, and what happens to these worries and fears over time? It was the first time research like this had been done.

Our review highlighted that there is a gap in the scientific literature and there is very little substantive information on this topic.

We also found that when psychological distress was measured, there was wide variation in the instruments used to assess adverse psychological outcomes. This indicates that there is a need for consensus on a more standardised approach to assess psychological distress among women following screening.

If we had more research on the potential ‘predictors’ of post-screening anxiety and distress, it would help clinicians and other health professionals to better support and monitor the more at-risk women attending cervical screening clinics'.

The paper is available from the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (BJOG) at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1471-0528.13462/abstract