Things You Should Learn Before Getting Your First Pap Smear?

Besides offering resentment plans, North Hills urgent care also offers preventative medical services that allow patients to detect diseases before they cause complications and become problematic. Such medical health care services are known as screening tests. One of the most commonly done tests in North Hills urgent care is the Pap smear test. North Hills Pap smear test is a screening test for detecting cancerous, precancerous, or abnormal cells.

Before you choose to get pap smears, there are several things you need to know about this lifesaving test done at the North Hills urgent care clinic. To learn more about these things, keep this article.

What are Pap Smears?

North Hills Pap smear test is a lifesaving gynecological test meant to help women know if they have abnormal cells that can cause cervical cancer. They are purposely done to prevent abnormal cells from growing into cancerous cells. Once detected, these abnormal cells are subjected to various tests to know if they are cancerous. If they are, treatment plans are administered to kill and eliminate them. The medical professional who performs a North Hills Pap smear test is called an ob-gyn or a gynecologist.

While performing the pap smear exam, the doctor may also choose to conduct the HPV or pelvic exam. HPV stands for human papillomavirus. This virus is transmitted sexually and can also cause cervical cancer if the pap smear test results are unclear or abnormal or do not necessarily mean that you have cancerous or precancerous cells. It may mean that you have an underlying medical illness or an infection.

At North Hills urgent care, Pap smear tests are combined with the human papillomavirus (HPV), which also causes cervical cancer. Besides detecting precancerous and cancerous cells, Pap smear tests also help doctors at North Hills urgent care clinic to diagnose other medical issues, including gynecological disorders and inflammation. A Pap test or Papanicolaou test are different names for the North Hills Pap smear test.

When should you start going for Pap Smear tests?

Pap smears are often done with pelvic examinations at North Hills urgent care clinic. Once you turn 30 years old, you need to combine the pap smear exam with the HPV test. If you are not sexually active, you may start going for pap smear exams once you reach 21. You can start going for pap smears when you are as young as 16 years old if you are sexually active.

You need to consult with a North Hills urgent care doctor on the best time to have the pap smears exam. After going for the first pap smear exams, you need to continue with it after every 2.5 to 3 years. Women who turn 30 years and have pap smear tests with the HPV tests can return for routine checks after every 5 years.

If there are certain risk factors that increase your chances of getting cervical cancer, you may need to go for pap smear tests more frequently. These factors may include the following:

If you recently had the North Hills Pap smear test and the results came out positive for precancerous cells. This means that the abnormal cells that were detected were precancerous or cancerous.
If a person is HIV positive.
If a person has overused certain drugs, including corticosteroid and chemotherapy, or had an organ transplant that has made her immune system weak.
When a person was already exposed to Des – diethylstilbestrol at birth.

Who does not need to have a pap smear test?

You need to understand that there are instances where a pap smear test is not necessary. These instances include:

1. When a person has undergone a total hysterectomy procedure

If a woman has had her uterus and the cervix removed through a medical procedure known as hysterectomy, she can discontinue the pap smear test. Your doctor will tell you that the pap smear test is unnecessary after this procedure.

There is also no need to go for a regular pap smear test if you had a surgical procedure known as a hysterectomy meant to remove the non-cancerous lesions. But if this procedure was done to eliminate precancerous or cancerous lesions, you may still need to continue with regular pap smear tests.

2. Women who are 65 years or older

You may also not have to continue having the pap smear test if you reach 65 years. If you have been going for pap smear tests and previous tests did not detect any signs of abnormal precancerous cells, you will have to stop going for pap smear tests.

Other procedures that an ob-gyn can do

An ob-gyn from North Hills urgent care clinic is a highly skilled medical practitioner who can perform other forms of surgery. Other gynecological procedures that an ob-gyn can do besides the pap smear test include:

Cesarean sections
A hysterectomy
Ovarian cysts and uterine fibroid removal growth removal
Pelvic organ injury repair surgery
Instrumental deliveries in childbirth

What results are expected from a pap smear test?

Once the gynecologist, an ob-gyn, finishes doing the North Hills Pap smear test, the extracted cervical samples are sent to the lab to undergo several tests to determine if there are any abnormal cells. Further tests may be necessary to establish whether the abnormal cells found are precancerous.

The results may either be normal (negative) or positive (abnormal). A normal pap smear results mean that abnormal cells were not detected. If the pap results turn out to be positive, abnormal cells were detected in the sample.

Conclusion

All women should go for pap smear tests regularly. This critical cancer screening test allows the doctor to detect and remove abnormal cells that may turn out to be cancerous. Once you turn 21, you need to start having this lifesaving screening test for cancer. At North Hills urgent care, the North Hills Pap smear test is often performed together with the pelvic or the human papillomavirus virus (HPV). Cervical cancer claims millions of lives every year, therefore, it is important to have a pap smear test to reduce its mortality rate.