Home smear tests could help raise cancer screening rates

WOMEN who do not attend cervical screening should be offered home test kits, a study has suggested.

Researchers called for the innovation after finding that tests carried out at home provided similarly accurate results to those done in a clinic.

They said that self-sampling was a generally more effective way of reaching women who did not regularly attend screening.

Last week, Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust warned that the rate of women who attend cervical screening had fallen to a 21-year low in England with just 71.4 per cent of women in England attending in 2017-18 compared to 82 per cent in 1997. Of 4.46million women aged 25 to 64 who were invited for a test during 201718, 1.28 million did not take up their invitation.

The study, published in the British Medical Journal, examined how selfsampling affected the accuracy of human papillomavirus testing.

Researchers from Australia and the US found tests based on a technology called polymerase chain reaction were as good at detecting cervical pre-cancer in samples taken by the woman herself as those taken by a healthcare worker. But self-tests based on “signal amplification” were not as good.

The authors found that mailing selfsample kits to a woman’s home generated higher response rates compared with an invitation or reminder letter asking them to attend an appointment.

The authors said their findings could help health officials “increase population coverage substantially”.