Precancerous lesions of the uterine cervix

Abstract

The presence of mucous and non-pathologic elements liable to hamper analysis of the smear is one of the main problems in ploidy assessment of precancerous cervical lesions. For our study, we employed a sampling system guided by microcolpohysteroscopy, which we used to identify the pathologic zone and select the morphologically altered elements only. Fifty-five cervical lesions and 6 negative controls were analyzed. All controls and 24 lesions were diploid, 15 polyploid and 16 aneuploid. All but one aneuploid lesions had a histological diagnosis of GIN. We failed to observe any significant difference in the aneuploid percentage of high and low grade lesions while diploid cases decreased in proportion to the severity of the lesion. The samples obtained had the advantage of being representative, technically valid and at the same time extremely suitable for an automated image analysis of ploidy. Thus this new sampling method could be extensively used.