Assessment of Pathtezt® Infinity Processor and Autoloader Efficiency in Cervical Smear Analysis.

OBJECTIVE

To assess the cellularity, epithelial cell coverage, cellular arrangement, preservation, and interfering factors of cervical cytological smears produced by the PathTezt® Infinity with Autoloader.

METHODOLOGY: A total of 1003 Pap smear samples were taken from Hospital Pakar Universiti Sains Malaysia and Hospital Raja Perempuan Zainab II and processed using the PathTezt® Infinity. The slides were evaluated for smear adequacy, epithelial cells coverage, cellular arrangement, interfering factors, and cellular preservation.

RESULTS

Approximately 946 samples (94.1%) were adequate for evaluation. The evaluation of cellular arrangement demonstrated good dispersion in 860 samples (85.7%), while 94.7% of the samples exhibited minimal to no obscuration by inflammatory cells. The presence of erythrocytes did not impede the evaluation of squamous cells in 1002 smears (99.9%). All smears showed good-quality fixation features for nuclear, cytoplasmic, and microorganism evaluation. The overall "good" performance rate was 97.7%. Chi-square analysis between the scoring categories and criteria for scoring showed statistical significance (p < 0.001).

CONCLUSION

The PathTezt® Infinity with Autoloader produces high-quality smears, is easy to operate, fully walk-away, and cost-effective, making it suitable for cervical cancer screening.