AbstractBackground: Cervical cancer has a huge emotional and financial burden on the society. To curb the disease, there is a need to develop a cost-effective screening tool with good sensitivity and specificity.
The present study is aimed to find out effectiveness of Visual Inspection with Acetic Acid (VIA) in picking up premalignant and malignant lesions of the cervix after comparing it with colposcopy and histopathology.
Aims and objectives: 1. To screen women of 30-45 years of age for precancerous cervical lesions with VIA., 2. To compare accuracy of VIA with Colposcopy., 3. To confrm the fndings with histopathology
examination.
Material and Methods: This was a prospective observational study conducted in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology among 500 women of 30-45 years of age group. VIA was carried out and all
VIA positive women were subjected to colposcopy.All women with colposcopy interpretation as CIN I,CIN I -II, CIN II-III and as unsatisfactory under wentcervical biopsy. Later on, colposcopy findings were correlated with histopathological findings.
Results: Out of 500 study group, 364 (72.8%) women were VIA negative and 136 (27.2%) were VIA positive. Out of 136 VIA positive women, 65 (47.8%) women were positive on colposcopy (either of CIN
I/I-II/II-III) and after biopsy 50 (82%) women had positive reports. (either of intraepithelial or invasive cervical lesions)
Conclusion: These results establish VIA as an effective screening test for cancerous and precancerous conditions of the cervix. Colposcopy can further interpret the VIA positive lesions with almost 100 %
sensitivity, specificity, NPV in high grade lesions.