Accuracy and false-positive rate of the cytologic diagnosis of follicular cervicitis: observations from the College of American Pathologists Pap Educational Program.
Follicular cervicitis is usually easily identifiable on Papanicolaou (Pap) tests; however, historically, follicular cervicitis is reported to lead to false-positive diagnoses of epithelial cell abnormalities.
To assess participant responses in the College of American Pathologists (CAP) Pap educational program (CAP-PAP) to determine the accuracy and false-positive rate of follicular cervicitis cases. Design.-We performed a retrospective review of 4914 participant responses for gynecologic cytology challenges with the reference diagnosis of follicular cervicitis during 11 years (2000-2010) from CAP-PAP. Reference diagnosis category, false-positive rates by participant type (laboratory, cytotechnologist, pathologist), and preparation type (conventional smears, ThinPrep) were analyzed.
Of the total 4914 general category responses, 4368 (88.9%) were benign while 546 (11.1%) responses were epithelial cell abnormalities (false positives). Of benign responses, only 2026 (46.4%) were an exact match to follicular cervicitis. Adenocarcinoma and high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion were the most common diagnoses chosen as a false-positive interpretation (42.3% and 20.1%, respectively). Participant type was significantly associated with false-positive interpretations (laboratory: 19.2%; cytotechnologist: 11.1%; pathologist: 7.9%; P