Two years after cervical loop surgery, two in three women have a normal smear
A Muğla university hospital reviews 64 women treated with LEEP for precancerous changes of the cervix.
When screening and biopsy find high-grade precancerous changes on the cervix, a common treatment is LEEP: a thin, electrically heated wire loop removes the abnormal tissue.
A gynaecologist at Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University, writing in The Ulutas Medical Journal in 2020, reviewed the records of 64 women treated this way between 2015 and 2017 and followed for two years.
Before treatment, nearly all those tested carried HPV, the virus behind most cervical cancers, with type 16 the most frequent. Two years later, about 14% still tested positive.
Smear results were normal in 67.2% of women at two years. Most of the rest showed mild or uncertain changes; only one woman, 1.6%, had a high-grade result. Four specimens had abnormal tissue at the cut edge, and three women needed a second LEEP.
The author judges the recurrence rates satisfactory.
Caveat: this is a small retrospective series from a single surgeon's practice, without a comparison group.
Source: Burak Sezgin. Outcomes of Two Years Follow-Up after Loop Electrosurgical Excision Procedure in a University Hospital. Ulutas Med J 2020. doi:10.5455/umj.20200624063656.
Image: Figure 3 of the article, CC BY-NC 4.0.
