Cervix cancer screening in Croatia within the European Cervical Cancer Prevention Week.

Croatia still has opportunistic screening and the organized national screening has been planned. The European Cervical Cancer Prevention Week was held twice in Croatia, in January 2008 and 2009. Within the first one in 2008, information campaign "For All Women" via mass media was held, and women were invited to the organized free gynecological examination and Papanicolaou test (Pap test) in the University Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Zagreb University Hospital Center. Following invitation 481 women attended the testing; the median age was 55 years. There were more women aged > or = 50 (n = 353), with the highest participation in the age group 55-59 years (n = 94). Some women came because of subjective symptoms (n = 10), but the majority of them came only for testing (n = 471). According to history of previous cytological testing, 400 women have had > or = 1 negative findings, 71 women have had > or = 1 positive findings, 9 women attended Pap test for the first time, and 1 woman does not know about previous testing. Cervical cytology was abnormal in 35 women (7.28%), the median age was 42 years with the highest proportion in the age group 30-34 years (n = 7); among all of them 21 women (60%) had no abnormal Pap test previously. The findings were: Atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance--ASC-US (n = 9), ASC cannot exclude high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion--ASC-H (n = 1), cervical intraepithelial neoplasia--CIN 1 (n = 13), CIN 2 (n = 1), CIN 3 (n = 6), carcinoma planocellulare (n = 2), atypical glandular cells--AGC-favor reactive endocervical cells (n = 3). Among women aged < or = 49 there were 20.47% abnormal findings and among those aged > or = 50, 2.55%. According to 21 positive Pap tests previously, among women aged < or = 49 there were 30.71% while among those aged > or = 50 there were 9.07%. Within the European Cervical Cancer Prevention Week in 2009, employed women from one national company were invited by internal information to the same procedure. A smaller group of younger asymptomatic women came for testing (n = 53), median age 39 years. According to history of previous cytological testing, 50 women have had > or = 1 negative findings, 3 women have had > or = 1 positive findings. In this study, Pap test was positive in 3.77% (n = 2). National screening programme should be focused on the participation of all personally invited women, especially younger age groups and under-screened women. Well designed information campaign should be implemented in national screening programme.