Cryosurgical treatment of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia with follow-up of five to eight years

Abstract

During 1972 to 1974, 181 women of different ages with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia were treated with cryosurgery. Of these, 170 have now been observed for 5 to 8 years. Treatment failures total 16%, but when the different age groups are considered the results are seen to be much better in young women less than 30 years of age, with only a 12% rate of failure, whereas older women have almost twice as many failures. One patient, 45 years of age, developed an early invasive cancer, but in her case pretreatment diagnosis may have been correct. Our conclusions are that cryosurgery is an easy and effective method of treating cervical intraepithelial neoplasia in young women, provided that the diagnosis prior to therapy is correct. Furthermore, we stress that after treatment the status of the patient must be checked with vaginal smears over a long period and also that at lease one endocervical curettage and directed biopsies of the vaginal cervix should be done as a control.