Aim
To compare the diagnostic parameters of electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) via ZedScan, a device that measures spectra to differentiate between normal and abnormal cervical tissues, when used as an adjunct to colposcopies in the diagnosis of HSILs/CIN2+ in Greek women with abnormal referral cytology toward colposcopy alone and HPV mRNA‐testing.
Methods
This study analyzed 86 women, patients of the Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology Clinic of 2nd Obstetrics and Gynecology Department, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki at Hippokration General Hospital, between January 2022 and September 2022. During the visits, women were subjected to cytology, colposcopy alone and then with EIS/ZedScan and histological sampling.
Results
Common use of colposcopies and EIS/ZedScan allowed detecting an additional 14 cases of CIN2+ (16.2%) that colposcopy alone failed to report. EIS enhanced the sensitivity of colposcopy from 80.65% to 100% equal with that of HPV‐mRNA test while retaining a high specificity (94.74%) which is much higher than specificity of HPV mRNA‐testing (65.45%). EIS‐assisted colposcopy had the highest value combination of positive and negative predictive values (96.15% and 100%) compared to colposcopy alone (100% and 75%) and HPV mRNA‐testing (72.46% and 100%).
Conclusions
Colposcopies performed with EIS/ZedScan demonstrated effectiveness in the diagnosing of CIN2+ leading to a significant increase in the number of CIN2+ that would have been missed if only colposcopy was applied especially in women with LSIL referral cytology. EIS/ZedScan seems to possess the ideal diagnostic threshold for sensitivity, specificity, and predictive values for CIN2+ compared to colposcopy alone and HPV mRNA‐testing.
Aim: To evaluate the diagnostic performance of E6/E7 HPV-mRNA overexpression towards HPV-DNA testing and p16/Ki67 immunocytochemistry in a post-op population to verify if this biomarker can be effectively used as indicator of successful cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) treatment. Methods: Our study retrospectively analyzed 197 patients of our Colposcopy Clinic between January 2013 and September 2020 coming with an abnormal Pap smear suggestive for colposcopy, and after a series of follow-ups including liquid-based cytology (LBC) and punch-biopsy sampling, there were surgically treated. LBC was used for cytology and molecular analysis of the three HPV-related biomarkers. Results: Six months after treatment, 93% of the HPV-mRNA-positive women became negative while this applied to only 80.2% of the HPV-DNA-positive women. HPV persistence was 6.9% at 6-12 months after treatment. The comparison among cytology, colposcopy, HPV-DNA test, and HPV-mRNA test after treatment revealed that the last one is the only with a strong correlation with actual severity (histology during treatment) (ρ = 0.345, p = 0.006) implying that clinical cases with more severe CIN may have higher chances of unsuccessful treatment. HPV-mRNA test had higher sensitivity (100%), specificity (96.88%), and positive predictive value (45.45%) for CIN2+ recurrent lesions when compared with HPV-DNA testing (80%, 82.81%, 10.81% respectively) and p16/Ki67 immunocytochemistry (80%, 95.83%, 33.33% respectively) while their negative predictive values were similar. Conclusions: E6/E7 mRNA detection has higher diagnostic values for the prediction of treatment failure compared with HPV-DNA testing and p16/Ki67 immunocytochemistry, and as an outcome could be used as predictive indicator of CIN-treatment status.
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