Melbourne mother and small business owner Sherry McMillan was about 3½ years overdue for a Pap smear in 2016 when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer at age 37.
“I’d never had a problem with my screening prior,so I wasn’t too concerned,” she said.
McMillan now lives with significant physical and psychological side effects from the cancer treatment,including swelling of the groin area,a rare result of having her pelvic lymph nodes removed. She also endured pain on her left side and a loss of sexual function.
“I had missed[my Pap smear] because we’d moved house,my daughter was starting school,I was working. It’s just one of those things that sometimes goes to the bottom of the list,and that’s ended up in a cancer diagnosis for me,” she said.
“I want to serve as a reminder to other women to look after your health and remember these screening tests,because they’re important and vital to keep you healthy.”
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From 2018 to 2020,the participation rate for cervical screening was 68 per cent,according to preliminary data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
Before July 2022,self-collected cervical screening tests were available to only a limited number of people. However,Professor Marion Saville,executive director of the Australian Centre for the Prevention of Cervical Cancer,said technology advancements had made it possible to offer a self-test to anyone eligible for screening,as such tests are now just as accurate as those done by a doctor.
In the last financial year,many thousands of self-collected tests were done by people who had never been screened or were overdue.
“Of course,acceptability is not going to be 100 per cent with self-collection either,” Saville said. “But it is the best tool we’ve had in more than 20 years in my time of working in this program[to] really reach the people we need to reach.”
Those eligible for self-screening are women or people with a cervix aged between 25 and 74 who have had any type of sexual contact.
The change followsanother major reform to Australia’s cervical screening program in 2017,which brought the end of the traditional Pap smear,a test that looked for abnormal cells in the cervix and had to be performed every two years.
It was replaced by a cervical screening test that detects the presence of the human papillomavirus virus,which causes almost all cases of cervical cancer. The test needs to be done every five years.
The new HPV test can identify people at risk of developing cervical cancer much earlier,before there are any cell changes.
Roeske said most people were still unaware of the self-collection option for their cervical screening,but once she showed patients how it worked,only one out of more than 100 patients declined. That woman still had her test but felt more confident with the GP doing it.
In the last financial year,the proportion of self-collected tests increased from 0.96 per cent to 15.67 per cent of tests,numbering 147,070.
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