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Hello, I'm Norman Swan. No woman likes having her regular Pap smear.
That's the gentle scrape of the ***, the neck or
opening to the womb, to detect cells that might be turning cancerous.
But like the test or not, it's halved the number of women developing
cervical cancer and halved the number of deaths from the disease.
This Health Minute aims to dispel two myths about Pap smears.
One is the belief by some women that Pap smears can detect cancer
of the ovary.
Well, they can't.
The best thing you can do for ovarian cancer
is know your own body and be aware of the symptoms of ovarian cancer.
The second myth about cervical cancer and Pap smears is that
with the introduction of human papilloma virus, HPV immunisation,
there is no need for immunised women to have regular Pap smears.
That's not true for two reasons.
One is there are about 15 different kinds of the human papilloma virus
that are related to cervical cancer and the current vaccine only covers
those which cause about 80% of cervical cancers.
So while immunised women are at much lower risk,
they still need Pap smears.
The second reason is that if a woman has had sex before her
HPV immunisation, then she might be just as much at risk as anybody else
and therefore need Pap smears.
The National Centre for Gynaecological Cancers has fact
sheets on this and they are available from Cancer Australia's website.