[Usefulness of colposcopy in inflammatory cervico-vaginal smears: apropos of 140 cases].

BACKGROUND: The cervical cancer is the second most frequent cancer of the woman in Tunisia. It is considered as a sexual transmissive desease due to the involvement of the HPV.

AIM: The purpose of our study is to proove that an inflammatory cervical smear should be considered as a positive test and must lead to other investigations.

METHODS: It is a prospective study over 140 cases of inflammatory cervical smears (without atypical cells) diagnosed during a year period from june 2001 to june 2002. These patients had a systematic colposcopy with the biopsy of suspicious lesions.

RESULTS: The mean age of our patients is 42 years. 68.57% of them are in active genital period. The colposcopy was normal in 10% of our patients. It showed benign lesions such as: ectropion in 22.85%, colpitis in 14.28%, cervical polypus in 5%, normal transformation zone in 8.57%, but also suspicious lesions such as : atypical transformations grade I (ATGI) in 25.71% and atypical transformations grade II (ATGII) in 13.57%. The biopsies made on 89 patients showed dysplasia and carcinoma in 18.57% of them. A case of in situ carcinoma, a microinvasif epidermoid carcinoma and an invasif glandular carcinoma were diagnosed.

CONCLUSION: Colposcopy is an ambulatory investigation. It makes a minutious study of the cervix and diminishes the rate of false negative made by the cervical smear.