Summary Cervical cancer is an important public health problem. Pap smear is the leading strategy of screening programs for cervical cancer worldwide. However, delayed diagnosis leads to more aggressive and less effective treatments. Patients with uterine cervix malignancies who are referred for radiotherapy have advanced-stage disease, which results in high rates of locoregional recurrence. The use of radiotherapy as a treatment for cervical cancer causes morphological changes in neoplastic and non-neoplastic epithelial cells, as well as in stromal cells, which make it difficult to diagnose the residual lesion, resulting in a dilemma in cytopathological routine. Based on the difficulties of cytopathologic evaluation for the follow-up of patients treated with radiotherapy for cervical cancer, our objective was to describe the actinic cytopathic effects. Our paper was based on a structured review including the period from June 2015 to April 2016, aiming at an exploratory-descriptive study. Bibliographic investigations were carried out through selection and analysis of articles, list of authors and keywords, selection of new articles focused on the analysis of bibliographic references to previously selected documents, as well as textbooks of recognized merit. The most incident actinic cytopathological alterations as described in the literature are: cellular gigantism, nuclear and cytoplasmic vacuolization, dyskeratosis, bi- and multinucleated (B/M) cells, macro and multiple nucleoli, anisokaryosis, anisonucleolosis and nuclear pyknosis. To date, a protocol has not been established that can precisely differentiate the morphological characteristics between benign cells with actinic effects from recurrent malignant cells on post-radiotherapy smears.

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