Cervical Smear Analysis of Women in Cross River State, Nigeria

Background: Cervical cancer is the most common genital malignancy and one of the leading causes of death among the female population. Cervical cancer continues to be with high prevalence among the populace in Africa. It is one of the cancers whose incidence has been drastically reduced due to continuous systematic screening.

Aim: To evaluate the cervical smear analysis of women in Cross river State, Nigeria.

Methodology: This is a cross sectional study of cervical smear of women in 5 out of the 18 local government areas of Cross River State (CRS), Nigeria. These local governments were randomly selected. These local government areas include, Akpabuyo, Biase, Calabar south, Municipality and Akamkpa local government areas. The primary health care centres in each of these five local governments were visited, Pap smear was done for the women who visited these primary health care centre and the results were analysed.

Results: A total of 114 cervical smears were analyzed. The age range of the subjects is between 20-69 years. The mean age in this study is 34.2 years. In all, 7.0% of the cervical smear show squamous intraepithelial lesions out of which 6.14% had low grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (LSIL) and 0.9% had high grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (HSIL). Cervical smear that were negative for intraepithelial lesion had a prevalence of 93.0%.

Conclusion: The prevalence of squamous intraepithelial lesion (SIL) is relatively high in semi-rural areas in Cross River State and there is urgent need for improvement in screening programs in order to reduce the incidence rate of the cervical cancer.