Women failing to attend smear tests

[guardianfree]

Women generally but young women in particular - 1 in 3 not attending.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/jos-cervical-cancer-trust-charity-smear-tests-terminal-illness-health-wellbeing-hospitals-a8171011.html

I know they're unpleasant (and often feel humiliating) but what can we do to reassure women that they can be life savers?

QuentinSummers

Men have two fingers shoved up their arse when checking their prostate, very unpleasant I imagine. A very treatable cancer if caught early enough.

I don't think that laughing at women whose past trauma makes the idea of going for a smear incredibly difficult / impossible is going to yield very positive results, walkingdead

You say go and look in the faces of ill women, but your approach is to laugh in the faces of women who've been traumatised?

Some women, I just don't understand where they're coming from at all. The approach clearly will make it even less likely that these women will attend, is there a hope for an "I told you so" later or something?

My last one was horrible. The nurse was crap, couldn't find my cervix and spoke to me as if I was somehow playing a practical joke on her. She was rough, it was painful, I bled and she told me that was abnormal. I was really worried until I got a clear test.

Wow, so just fear monger and shame and chastise women rather than try to find out how to make such screenings more acceptable to them, Walking.

Walkingdead

That is not true at all.

I googled Prostate tests earlier on because someone mentioned it.

Men do not have anything "shoved" anywhere, you seem to take a certain amount of pleasure in that phrasing.

Please have a read of the NHS pages on this. There is no screening program. Men can have it or not. And there's a blood test available.

Get your facts straight.

I can't understand women who choose not to have them done. I'd had normal smears until 3 yrs after my last DD was born. I had a letter within a week, and a hospital appointment for about 9 days time. I was terrified, and stupidly went alone to be told I'd got early cancer cells and needed immediate treatment. This was done around a week later, and I had the majority of my cervix excised. I was 30 years old and had 3 young children. That smear undoubtedly saved my life. I had 3 monthly smears for around 5 years, and can honestly say I don't even flinch at them anymore. Being alive more than takes precedence over a few seconds discomfort in my eyes.

@JaneEyre70 have you read the thread and considered the reasons that have variously been explained here?

AssassinatedBeauty

What is horrible is people dying for the sake of a 2 minute test, for the vast majority that is all it takes. I've had bad, innept and downright degrading smears but I know it's necessary. Yes nothing is 100% perfect and changes are necessary. When Jane Goody died there was a massive uptake of younger women having smears, that saved lives. I don't want women to die from preventable diseases, what the hell is wrong with that?..

I’m curious about the role of HPV. It sound so like you wouldn’t need a smear if you don’t have HPV. Is HPV completely sexually transmitted? If so, then do women with low/no risk of catching HPV need smears, or could it be more targeted?

You were unaware that healthcare policy is sometimes influenced by politics and prevailing opinion walking? Wow.

Screening involves a certain risk of false positives. You generally have to do a particular number of procedures, once an abnormality is detected, in order to save one life. In retrospect some will be unnecessary, and procedures carry risks of their own too. If they didn't this would be a different discussion.

Some people's risk of both the condition itself and of false positives will be higher, as will some people's risk of suffering complications following the procedure. It's important that everybody has this information in order to make the least risky choice for them, and pretending that a particular screening procedure will invariably be the least risky choice for a given individual just makes you sound like you don't understand what you're talking about.

Walking read the links www.bmj.com/content/326/7395/901

Granny men do get offered screening tests. Note offered, not guilted or coerced. There's a general belief that women's vaginas and breasts are going to kill them and need regular examinations. Not so with men. This is just another campaign to pressure women into unnecessary screening. Fwiw, I have serious concerns about Jos trust.

What is wrong is your deeply unpleasant berating of women for not doing what you think is reasonable! You think that women are stupid or ignorant, and should be berated and told off, with images of cancer stricken women. Do you really think that's the right way to increase uptake rates?

What is wrong with it is, is your attitude to the women on this thread who have posted very personal stories about why they avoid smears or find them very difficult.

For someone who is so keen on prevention you seem to lack compassion entirely.

How do you feel about babies dying due to preventable premature birth walking? Is that not worth a mention?

Walking Bingo! What about the poor menz...

When Jane Goody died there was a massive uptake of younger women having smears, that saved lives.

Bit ironic really considering Jade Goody had a regular smear tests.

UpABitLate

Ehat traumatised women have i laughed at?? Ffs as if!! The vast majority of women who don't go for smears have not been traumatised. There are hopefully specialised services for those traumatised women?

an nhs page on prostate saying no screening prog

have a read

So unless sufficiently traumatised, then women should be berated, harangued, told they're stupid,

ScreamingValenta, not just my husband then. He is 70 so I would have thought he was likely target group. He sees GP regularly as he is disabled and has diabetes so not like he is forgotten by the surgery. A close friend died of prostate cancer so I'm pretty sure he would take the test.

I don't understand why boys aren't offered the HPV vaccination. Surely it would be a good idea.

I won't go for smears or mammograms. Both are painful and I'm not convinced they are necessary. I would go as far as to say that I think the mammogram could damage breast tissue.

@joystir, that's insane. I hope you don't go around spouting that dangerous shit.

Etc until they comply

"Instead of a national screening programme, there is an informed choice programme called prostate cancer risk management for healthy men aged 50 or over who ask their GP about PSA testing. It aims to give men good information on the pros and cons of a PSA test.

If you're a man aged 50 or over and decide to have your PSA levels tested after talking to your GP, they will be able to arrange for it to be carried out for free on the NHS.

If results show you have a raised level of PSA, your GP may suggest further tests."

No suggestion that men who are disinclined to have the test should be taken around some cancer wards, and then laughed at. Funny that.

Men are trusted to be given the facts and make rational decisions about their own bodies, which are then respected.

Women are told to get on the bed and spread your legs, and I don't care if you're a victim of abuse and this is traumatic for you.

Yes, 'embarrased' doesn't really cover it does it.

They're a bit unpleasant and sometimes painful, and often inconvenient.

Smacks of the same paternal tutting I got when in agony with contractions having my second kid - 'have you tried a warm bath', 'how about paracetamol' - the idea that we're just being silly women and exaggerating.

I think a good practice nurse makes all the difference - for the last but one I had no-way to get a baby sitter, so DS (about 2 or 3) sat in his buggy, with a phone, no problem. Wouldn't have been possible at a previous practice where there was barely enough room for me and the nurse in the room, and charmingly, the way it was laid out meant that you were splayed out offering a full view to anyone who opened the door (or through the hinges if it was left open a crack) - as happened when the nurse went out to get something during mine!

I've never really understood why there's so much sanctimoniousness about the issue of cervical screening and mammograms. There are all sorts of things we can do to improve our health - stop smoking, take exercise, eat less sugary food, lose weight, drink less alcohol (it's now been shown that there is a direct causal relationship between alcohol and breast cancer) - and yet the thing that people focus on is these two screening tests. They come out with all this pious stuff about children left without their mothers, how cancer is worse than the discomfort of a smear etc. Don't they think that people know that?

There is now strong evidence of a causal link between gum disease and heart disease: anyone with gum disease ought to be having regular treatment from their dentist and periodontist. Yet I don't see anyone banging on about that.