Cervicovaginal Cytopathology by Liquiprep™ a New Liquid BasedMethod in Comparison with Conventional Pap Smear

Background and objective: the aim of this study was to compare the screening performance ofa new modified liquid-based cytology method (liquiprep™) with conventional pap smear (cp) ina low risk population, using colposcopy followed by histology as “gold standard”.patients and methods: this cross-sectional study was performed on random referred specimensto a general gynecological clinic in tehran, during 20 months by a split-sample method. in bothcp and liquiprep™ group, all positive and 10% of negative results of smears were followed bycolposcopy. a biopsy was taken whenever any atypical transformation zone seen. sensitivity,specificity, negative and positive predictive values (pv), and overall accuracy of both methods wereanalyzed in relation to histology.results: a total of 1265 patients were analyzed by two methods. in 158 (12.5%) of cases histologicaldiagnosis was made. liquiprep™ samples (94.7%) were more adequate than cp (92.1%). therewas not any low or high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (sil). atypical squamous cell ofundetermined significance (asc-us) was diagnosed more with cp than with liquiprep™ (1.43%vs. 0.79%) while pathologically 60% of asc-us in liquiprep™ and 16.6% in cp had degrees ofsil. the liquiprep™ had a significantly higher sensitivity (83% vs. 66%) and positive pv (83%vs. 33%) than the cp to detect sil at histology but the difference in specificity was non significant(98% vs. 86%).conclusions: this study confirms the superiority of the liquiprep™ method to detect cervicallesions in a low risk population.