Utility of pap smears and mammograms in midlife urban Malaysian women
Cancers of the breast and cervix made up 30.4% and 12% of all cancer cases in Malaysia. Thus screening for reproductive organ cancers as women approached menopause becomes exceedingly important. The study reports the baseline assessment tests of 495 disease free urban Malaysian women aged 45 year...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Penerbit UKM
2008
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/2018/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/2018/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/2018/1/Page_59_-_68.pdf |
| Summary: | Cancers of the breast and cervix made up 30.4% and 12% of all cancer cases in Malaysia.
Thus screening for reproductive organ cancers as women approached menopause
becomes exceedingly important. The study reports the baseline assessment tests of 495
disease free urban Malaysian women aged 45 years and above who volunteered in a
healthy lifestyle intervention study. The sample comprised of 58.0% premenopaused and 42.0% postmenopaused women with an average age of 51.27±5.35 years old. Over two
thirds were Chinese followed by Malays and Indians. Overall, abnormal Pap smears
were seen in 7.6% comprising of 1.3% cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN), 6.1%
human papilloma virus (HPV) infection and 0.2% atypical squmous cells of undetermined
significances (ASCUS). Yeast and other infections were found in 6.9% and 1.9%
respectively. Comparatively, postmenopausal women had a 2.8 fold higher cancerous
changes whereas premenopausal women had a higher infection rate, 11.8% vs. 4.7%
respectively (p=0.024) with comparable HPV infection rates in both. This study found 1.3%
had breast cancer (BC) with 3.6% requiring a biopsy while 3.4% needed regular follow up.
Postmenopaused women had more abnormal mammograms (p<0.0005) of a graver
nature, requiring monitoring although the rate of BC was lower than the premenopaused,
0.010 versus 0.015. The findings identified better vigorous screening for malignant
carcinoma of the cervix in postmenopausal women as the incidence was higher. As for
breast abnormalities, screening should begin at an earlier age, amongst pre- and
postmenopausal women from 45 years old and above |
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