PAP SMEAR ERRORS

False negative cervical cytology negligence cases increasingly succeed: most are settled or found for the Plaintiff. A recent international Cytology Task Force[1] produced a consensus statement of intent to reverse the trend.

Some Plaintiff expert witnesses were perpetuating an unrealistic expectation of the predictive accuracy of a negative Pap smear.

A greater and more urgent problem was education of clinical physicians to provide patients with information on the limitations of the procedure prior to consent.

The panel acknowledged quality-control problems with some laboratories, some cytologists.

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