Dr. Schultz at NEWS has been offering the ThinPrep Pap Smear since 1996.  She realized in '96 that a better mouse trap had been developed....and she was not afraid to bring this technology to her patients' health care.  Since then, the HPV viral type testing has been added as well as the recent inclusion of Chlamydia/GC DNA probes. Today when she obtains any abnormal pap test she adds Genotyping to the testing. With the advent of Gardisil your doctor should be able to tell you which virus you have and thus whether the Gadrisil worked or not. Dr. Schultz can. You should also know, if this virus ever causes problems in the future, if it is the same or a different virus.

The Thin Prep means that you get a 65% more accurate pap that can further test for the presence of virus and bacterial organisms without a return visit to the physician.  The ThinPrep method also improves specimen quality by reducing blood, mucous, inflammation and other obscuring artifacts by using a liquid vial instead of the traditional glass slide. 

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Conventional vs ThinPrep Pap Test

With the conventional Pap smear method, cells can be obscured by blood, mucus, and inflammation	The ThinPrep Pap Test method preserves the cells and minimizes cell overlap, blood, mucus, and inflammation.

Women have pap smears done to detect and prevent cervical cancer....cervical cancer is a disease that is sexually transmitted and progresses through pre-cancerous and cancerous stages over a number of years. 

What this means to you is that cervical cancer is virtually 100% curable if it is detected and treated appropriately in the earlier stages of progression. The later it is detected, the greater the cost of treatment. 

Dr. Schultz believes that abnormal pap smears are also a factor of the health of our immune system.  Please see the following article written by Dr. Schultz for further discussion of these principles.