I’ve never had a smear test and I don’t want one either

Congrats…I guess

It’s your life 🤷‍♀️

Some doctors have "done their research" too. Dr Angela Raffle Bristol, to save one life from cervical cancer you'd have to screen 1000 women for 35 years and then follow up and aggressively treat the 50-80 women with abnormalities, many of which return to normal on their own. Dr Margaret McCartney in Scotland is a GP who refuses her own smear"invites". Professor Sir Michael Baum was tasked with setting up the Breast Screening Programme and has since called for it to be scrapped. Just saying...

It sounds like everyone has the option here? Or is that not the case in reality?

https://www.health.gov.au/resources/collections/self-collection-for-the-cervical-screening-test?language=en

Normal smear tests don’t look at the cells for everyone either. That’s what some of us are very cross about.

I mean, it’s your choice. The GP are ringing you because it’s a public health initiative and they are trying to, you know, pick up health changes early.

Instead of getting on your high horse on Mumsnet, why don’t you write to the GP surgery, it’ll save them having to ring someone who doesn’t want the initiative.

Guessing you’re an anti vaxxer as well? Don’t get bowel cancer screening?

Good luck I guess. Screenings are there for a reason

You can opt out of screening by letting your GP practice know. You used to have to do it in writing. GP practices get paid for reaching percentage targets in screening rates. As a former practice manager we couldn’t just take people off the list without their express written consent for audit purposes

Australia has not gone to self-testing. It's vaguely available in some places.

That quote literally shows that the smear test is not checking for cell changes unless you have hpv which is what the previous person was trying to explain.

Cells are not routinely checked.

To the poster who asked if Australia was seeing an uptick increase in cervical cancer rates now they went to self testing and bypassed the nurses visual inspection: I can't answer for Australia, but Dutch and Finnish women have had the self test option for far longer, and their rates of cervical cancer and deaths from, are among the lowest in the world. They offer less screens too, starting at 30, and assuming you are negative you would have only about 5_6 self screens over your lifetime

There've been a number of posts that went way beyond 'replying similarly'. Fair enough if you don't want to read the whole thread to see them, but aside from the usual personal insults about stupidity (which OP hasn't done) some have crossed the barrier into fucking disgraceful. I've counted at least two nasty permutations of 'but you had a dick up there'. Quite why some of these posters felt it appropriate to reply as they did isn't clear, but they evidently considered she deserved it.

Yup and it’s clear to me that many people on this post don’t even realise!

The figure of 3300 diagnoses per year in the UK comes from CRUKs data. You can check it here if you want to:
Cervical cancer statistics | Cancer Research UK https://share.google/UM1dG5uemj81KzWMx

The conversation on this topic started with one woman expressing her thoughts on the UK screening programme. All through the thread we've been talking about the UK. A chatGPT response posted up thead was deemed too American to be relevant to this discussion. So I am continuing focusing on UK women. If you want to talk about global cervical cancer screening maybe start a different thread.

There are finite resources available. The NHS budget is insufficient to our needs. Descisions need to be made about how best to spend money on individual screening programmes to ensure value. Value being both financial and in terms of health outcomes over time. While on a human level, I'm certain we'd all agree that each life matters, that way of thinking would paralise competent decision making on an organisational level for delivering national health care on a budget.

In an ideal situation money wouldn't come into it. But it does. To say otherwise would be naive. Consider a potential situation where the NHS continued spending money to screen for those 10 non HPV cancers a year, but then had to withdraw funding for an expensive cancer drug in order to balance their books. Which choice is better?

On reading again, I think I misunderstood you as saying the OP had scaremongered when you meant the PP. Apologies on that point.

OP: “I don’t think it’s necessary, as I’ve read about my risk factors and I don’t meet the criteria. All the men I’ve slept with (without protection) were virgins and yes I know they were for sure …

if you refuse smear or breast screening you’re seen as an awful person, and those who do are morally superior.”

Whilst Op might not want one, they do save lives, as many in this thread have said.

I don’t think anyone thinks they are morally superior or has said as much - but some have acknowledged that having a smear has led to a life-saving diagnosis and treatment. So they are grateful.

OP has had a fairly robust tone, others have replied similarly.

Personally I would trust the more professional research (NHS etc) over my own, and I would trust a medical professional more than myself do to the test. We’re all different.

OP can do what she wants - aren’t we lucky to live in a free country. I’ll take the smear tests, the mammograms and everything else offered.

@MithralI would have been called in from the HPV, yes. The visual abnormality expedited the situation.

Obviously, I haven’t needed a smear in quite some time now - I had quite enough people up there while I was being treated!

The one problem I can see with these self tests is accuracy of the testing. I’ll be honest, I don’t know the process fully but my brief understanding is that it still requires cells from the cervix via a brush type thing. Are women going to be ‘brushing’ the right bit or just have a poke around and think that’s okay? I’m sure that many will go to great lengths to do it properly (no puns!) but, for me, I would prefer a medical professional to do that kind of poking about to try and ensure that it’s done as appropriately as possible. Personal choice, I get that. It just makes me think of the issues with contraception - very highly effective if used properly, but stats indicate it isn’t used properly.

The test also doesn’t get round the ‘not wanting foreign bodies up there’ argument. Yes, brush much smaller and less invasive than a speculum but leads me back to my worries on inaccuracy. If a woman is distressed, worried, uncomfortable etc, are they going to take the necessary time and care to get it in the ‘right’ place?

From a place of experience, I have been there and believe me, it’s shit. I would take a speculum up the chuff every day for the rest of my life to have not experienced what I did. I’m incredibly grateful to be here with my half a vadge and no periods, but I would have it way different if I could.

It’s your body, you can choose but you can’t be angry because doctors encourage screening. I had abormal cells removed from my first one at 27. My former colleague passed away at 36 from cervical cancer. I would never not have it done, even though I despise the procedure and have a lot of trauma from birth. I still acknowledge its importance.

I no longer want smear tests since the NHS stopped testing all samples for abnormal cells. They now only test for HPV and then test for abnormal cells if you have it. I have had HPV but now test negative so my last sample wasn’t submitted for further testing. I’m not going to put myself through a smear again for nothing (and, yes, I did inform the nurse I’d had HPV).

I agree no need for rudeness on either side. I think it's fine to debate things and I find the rush to shut up the OP (not from you) really irritating.

The visual abnormality side is interesting I can't seem to find any data on how often this is relevant. Does anyone know if the countries (like Australia) who do non-invasive HPV tests have seen any cancer uptick? If you were also positive for HPV (which is true for more than 99% of cervical cancers) then you wouldn't be dead under the system OP is suggesting we should use. You would have been called in after the positive HPV. Thank goodness!

Absolutely.

The discussions that will happen as and when proposals to move to a more NZ and Australia like system are raised will be very interesting. And have to be handled carefully, if the discussion on threads like this is anything to go by.

Debate! In a free society we are allowed to have open debate!

I would be dead - it was visual inspection on my smear that identified the tumour resulting in very swift treatment.
That tumour required a full hysterectomy including ovaries whilst pregnant with my second child and subsequent treatment.
Visual inspection contributes to the efficacy of a smear.
Each to their own, but I do feel that the comments regarding moral superiority on one side and brainwashing on the other are inappropriate.
If women decide against smears then fine, you do you but please don’t try and convince others that these screening checks aren’t important or that they don’t save lives.

Yes exactly. There are some crazy posts on this thread and a lot of people who don't understand what they're being screened for. There are also a really implausible (statistically speaking) number of people who had pre cancerous cells and no HPV infection. These people would not now be treated at all as their cell samples would be discarded after their HPV test came back clear. I wonder if these represent a lot of false positives actually. It's one of the arguments for changing the way the tests are done.

The "I would be dead now" people are (thankfully!) very likely wrong. It's more likely that nothing would have developed and you'd have avoided an unnecessary medical procedure that weakened your cervix.

For some reason we are not allowed to question whether the NHS could change the way they do the screening without people getting hugely upset.

I don’t think she has scaremongered anyone into not screening and she hasn’t ignored screening either.

@RisingVamp I was responding to another poster who claimed that we were being brainwashed into screening. I was on my phone and couldn't find that particular post. As a pp pointed out screening (and vaccinations) is cheaper for the NHS than treatment, which is why they do it. It has a cost benfit.

Agree. And the argument that husband hasn’t been called for prostate screening is bizarre.

To add: Lately DH (late 50s) went for a PSA blood test as a precaution- GP was happy to oblige - but he refused the digital exam. I was a bit annoyed saying women get poked about routinely and a finger up the bum isn’t actually that painful, but he still wimped out.