Infertility

In The Netherlands, all women between the ages of 30 and 60 years undergo cervical-smear testing as part of a population-based screening program for cervical cancer.

Smears are also collected from all women eligible for in vitro fertilization (IVF) at the Radboud University fertility clinic.

The investigators hypothesized that patients at the fertility clinic would have a higher-than-average prevalence of severely abnormal smears, based on the clinical observation that many women are referred to the university's colposcopy unit for cytological abnormalities.

The research team conducted a retrospective study of all smears collected from January 2000 to December 2003, comparing those smears from women eligible for IVF at the clinic to those smears obtained in the screening program.

A total of 77,055 smears from the cervical-screening program were compared to 668 smears from the IVF c...

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