Distribution of cervical abnormalities detected by visual inspection with acetic acid in Swaziland, 2011–2014: A retrospective study

African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Distribution of cervical abnormalities detected by visual inspection with acetic acid in Swaziland, 2011–2014: A retrospective study
 
Creator Ginindza, Themba G. Almonte, Maribel Dlamini, Xolisile Sartorius, Ben
 
Subject primary care; family medicine; primary health care cervical abnormalities; visual inspection with acetic acid; HIV; HSIL; LSIL; pap test; Mbabane; Swaziland  
Description Background: Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer worldwide among women, with the number of new cases increasing from 493 243 in 2002 to 527 000 in 2012. These numbers are likely to be underestimated because given the lack of registration resources, cervical cancer deaths are usually under-reported in low-income countries.Aim: To describe the distribution of and trends in visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA) to detected cervical abnormalities in Swaziland by reviewing records of VIA examinations performed at two main hospitals in Swaziland between 2011 and 2014.Setting: Mbabane Government Hospital and Realign Fitkin Memorial (RFM).Methods: Records of cervical screening using VIA at the Mbabane government hospital and RFM hospital between 2011 and 2014 were retrieved. Positivity rates (PRs) of VIA with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were calculated and used as proxies of cervical abnormalities. Odds ratios of the association between VIA-detected cervical abnormalities and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) status were estimated using logistic regressions.Results: VIA was positive in 1828 of 12 151 VIA records used for analysis (15%, 95% CI: 14.4–15.7). VIA was positive in 9% (36 of 403) women under the age of 20, in 15.5% (1714 of 11 046) of women aged 20–49 years and in 11.1% (78 of 624) of women aged 50–64 years. A decreasing trend of VIA positivity was observed over time at both screening centres (p for trend 0.001). Of 2697 records with Papanicolaou results, 20% (67 of 331) VIA-positives and only 5% (114 of 2366) VIA negatives had high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion. Among 4578 women with reported HIV status, 1702 were HIV-positive (37.2%, 95% CI: 35.8–38.6). The prevalence of HIV in VIA-positive women was 62.5% (95% CI: 58.7–66.2), almost double that among VIA-negative women (33.0%, 95% CI: 31.6–34.5) and that among all women screened (p  0.001). HIV-positive women were 3.4 times more likely to have cervical abnormalities on VIA than HIV-negative women (OR: 3.4, 95% CI: 2.8–4.0, p  0.01).Conclusion: The high VIA PRs observed over four years in this study may reflect the prevalence of cervical abnormalities, in particular, in HIV-positive women. VIA is not a robust screening test, but it can play a major role in strengthening and expanding cervical cancer screening prevention programmes in resource-limited countries.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor University of KwaZulu-Natal College of health sciences Doctoral research Scholarship grant and another part funding from Health and Welfare Sector Education and Training Authority (HWASETA).
Date 2018-10-18
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — survey
Format text/html application/epub+zip application/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/phcfm.v10i1.1773
 
Source African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine; Vol 10, No 1 (2018); 7 pages 2071-2936 2071-2928
 
Language eng
 
Relation
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https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/1773/2856 https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/1773/2855 https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/1773/2857 https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/1773/2850
 
Coverage Swaziland 2011-2014 Gender
Rights Copyright (c) 2018 Themba G. Ginindza, Maribel Almonte, Xolisile Dlamini, Ben Sartorius https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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