HPV prevention in women aged 30–65 in Istanbul: Effect of early diagnosis of cervical cancer

OBJECTIVE: Earlier detection and timely interventions against cancers are well known to reduce the morbidity and mortality. Screening programs provide opportunity to detect cancers as early as precancerous stages. Cancers of cervix of uterus are one of the cancers that have widely applicable screening methods and are one of the three cancer types that have population-based screening program in Turkiye. In this article, it is aimed to evaluate cervical cancer screenings in Istanbul. METHODS: The study methodology for cervical cancer screening conducted between 2015 and 2020 in Istanbul, Turkiye’s largest city, was introduced. The results obtained in the first round of screening of 723,068 women with the human papillomavirus (HPV) method as a new methodology are discussed. RESULTS: As a summary of results, the HPV positivity ratio was found to be 6.5% and the positivity rate was higher in younger women. The results also show that majority of the subjects with positive result were infected with more than 1 strains of HPV. Most prevalent subtypes detected were HPV16, HPV51, HPV31, HPV52, and HPV66, respectively. Total detection rate for any of the high-risk HPV subtypes was 29.95%. CONCLUSION: Although HPV-16 is the highest subtype to be infected and total percentage of infection with any high-risk strains is approximating to one-third of the total positivity, cytological results revealed only 8.1% meaningful results.