Clinical audit of patients with cervical cancer in Slovenia--data analysis for the year 2003.

PURPOSE OF INVESTIGATION: The data gathered in 2003 on the patients with cervical cancer who regularly attended their gynecologist were analyzed with the purpose of clinical audit.

METHODS

The data on newly detected patients with cervical cancer in 2003 who regularly attended their gynecologist were gathered simultaneously at three Advisory Boards for Gynecology in Slovenia.

RESULTS

Of 149 patients in whom, according to our data, invasive cervical cancer had been diagnosed, 92 (61.7%) patients were examined by a gynecologist in the previous five years. In the majority of these patients, cervical cancer was diagnosed in early, localized disease stage. In the periods of 13-24 and of seven to 12 months before the diagnosis of cervical cancer, almost half the patients had Pap II, and three to six months before diagnosis, 67.6% of patients had Pap II.

CONCLUSION

These results encourage us to proceed with clinical audits to analyze individual cervical cancer cases, including another independent reevaluation of cervical smears in the five-year period before diagnosis. A suitable calendar of refresher training courses on colposcopy, which should be obligatory for all performing this examination method, also needs to be set up.