A tale of medical shopping or the hazards of repetitious cytological screening of the cervix.

A 65-year-old woman had on her own initiative three cervical smears taken at very short intervals. The second smear was taken only 1 day after the first one. It contained necrotic cellular material with atypia due to the scraping on the day before; it was at first mistakenly interpreted as showing malignant features. This led to the performance of various diagnostic procedures, and a considerably greater cost for the medical insurance system.