Endometrial cells and the AutoPap system for primary screening of cervicovaginal Pap smears

In 1998, the AutoPap 300 received FDA approval for primary screening of conventional cervical smears. As approved, smears categorized as “no further review” and comprising up to 25% of the smears screened by the AutoPap 300 can be reported as negative for malignant and dysplastic cells without screening by a cytotechnologist. We studied 106 conventional cervical smears in which glandular endometrial cells had been identified by manual screening to assess the ability of the AutoPap System (TriPath Imaging, Inc., Burlington, NC) to (1) designate conventional Papanicolaou smears that contain endometrial cells for “review,” and (2) stratify smears that contain endometrial cells as more or less likely to be abnormal.