last update of this page: 29 July 2005
During the course of the research reported in this chapter evidence was published showing that some simple aids to visual inspection are expected to lead to very little extra costs while both sensitivity and specificity improve.(Gaffikin et al. 1999; Sankaranarayanan et al. 1999; Sankaranarayanan et al. 1998) This means that unaided visual inspection of the cervix would never be the preferred screening method. Aided visual inspection has been shown to possibly have a sensitivity that is similar to pap smears. Specificity is still not very high, but so much higher than for unaided visual inspection, that it is not clear on beforehand whether the cost saved by screening by aided visual inspection instead of pap smears is superseded by the extra cost of diagnostics due to lower specificity. The expected effectiveness and need for scarce resources of visual inspection with application of several possible simple aids in comparison with pap smear screening is subject for further research.