While it certainly pays to be vigilant when it comes to one's health, especially for preventable types of cancer, it is also equally important to know when to undergo screening. This reduces the mental and physical stress that comes with being tested and saves both the government and the citizens money.
Take, for example, cervical cancer screening. Unless you're considered to be high risk of the cancer, you don't have to take it every year, and by the time you're 65, you can now stop going through screening.
According to the guidelines developed by the American College of Physicians, girls can wait until they are 21 years old to begin screening for cervical cancer, and a simple procedure called pap smear, which collects tissue samples from the cervix, is enough for diagnosis. From this age, the test can then be repeated every three years, provided the results always turn out to be negative.
When a woman reaches the age of 30, cervical cancer screening test can then be combined with an HPV test, and both can be taken every five years. At 65 years old, screening can now be skipped as long as the results of the HPV exams are negative for the last two screenings and pap smears are also negative over the last three tests. Besides, the chances of having an HPV infection that leads to cancer are almost zero around this age.
On the other hand, women who have gone through a hysterectomy may already avoid the exams all together. Hysterectomy is a surgical procedure that involves the removal of the uterus. However, a complete surgery may also mean removing the ovaries, fallopian tubes, and cervix.
Women are considered to be low risk if they haven't been diagnosed with cervical cancer before or they didn't have confirmed precancerous lesions. They should also have not undergone any organ transplant or diagnosed with HIV infection.
