Due both to cost and to the volume of work, it is not possible for the National Screening Programme to offer most women a smear more frequently than every 3 or 5 years. Although if a women is identified as being in a high risk category she will normally be offered a more regular smear.

Cases have been identified in the UK where abnormalities have been missed in up three consecutive smears. Consequently abnormal cells could be developing for up to 20 years before being identified. In practise this would be likely to result in cervical cancer developing within this time. It is a statistical fact that an annual smear offers greater protection than one taken every 3 years which, in turn, offers greater protection than one taken every 5 years. A nationally funded screening programme must compare the benefits of these greater protection levels with the cost of supplying them. The number of lives that could be saved through annual testing would be very small when compared with the cost of offering this service to all women in the country.

In an ideal world a women would have a smear test every year.

The benefits of annual testing are as follows:-

  If an error is made in the examination of the smear it is far less likely to be significant if the women is taking a smear every year.

  An accurate examination every year will result in abnormalities being identified earlier than those identified through an examination every three years. If the abnormality is more of a borderline case then the procedures required to monitor and rectify this maybe less serious and less intrusive.

The missing of abnormal cells on one occasion will very often not have serious consequences. If a women has a regular smear then it is unlikely that a minor abnormality will have developed in to full cancer in the interim period. However because there is always the possibility that abnormalities have been missed the regularity of smear testing becomes extremely important.