We are supposed to audit all aspects of practice. Problems arise when you find something unpleasant This is what happened in Leicestershire this spring. Our pathologists carried out a retrospective audit of the cervical smear history of 403 patients who developed invasive cervical cancer between January 1993 and September 2000. Of these women, 324 (80%) had had a cervical smear before diagnosis and their test results were re-examined. In 84 cases a false negative report had been issued; in 38 cases the cyto-logical abnormality had been undergraded.
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