Development of a Risk Index for Prediction of Abnormal Pap Test Results in Serbia

Background: Serbia is one of the countries with highest incidence and mortality rates for cervical cancer inCentral and South Eastern Europe. Introducing a risk index could provide a powerful means for targeting groupsat high likelihood of having an abnormal cervical smear and increase efficiency of screening. The aim of thepresent study was to create and assess validity ofa index for prediction of an abnormal Pap test result. Materialsand
Methods: The study population was drawn from patients attending Departments for Women’s Health in twoprimary health care centers in Serbia. Out of 525 respondents 350 were randomly selected and data obtainedfrom them were used as the index creation dataset. Data obtained from the remaining 175 were used as an indexvalidation data set.
Results: Age at first intercourse under 18, more than 4 sexual partners, history of STD andmultiparity were attributed statistical weights 16, 15, 14 and 13, respectively. The distribution of index scoresin index-creation data set showed that most respondents had a score 0 (54.9%). In the index-creation datasetmean index score was 10.3 (SD-13.8), and in the validation dataset the mean was 9.1 (SD=13.2).
Conclusions:The advantage of such scoring system is that it is simple, consisting of only four elements, so it could be appliedto identify women with high risk for cervical cancer that would be referred for further examination.