Ideal cancer screening program should be not only accurate but also cost-effective. However, in Korea, the two aspect of cervix cancer screening program was not yet evaluated. Thus we conducted this study to evaluate the cost-effectiveness and accuracy of various screening methods for detecting uterine cervical neoplasia.

We used various methods (conventional Pap smear, cervicography and HPV test) to detect cervical neoplasia on 255 women who visited the Seoul National University Hospital from Dec. 1996 to Jul. 1997 and analyzed the accuracy and cost-effectiveness of each method along with various combinations of methods using Bayesian theorem. The accuracy was judged by the final histopathologic diagnosis.

Sensitivity (SE) and specificity (SP) of each method to detect cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) 1 or above were 83.0% and 69.4% in Pap smear, 53.7% and 85.2% in cervicography, and 57.8% and 80.6% in HPV test, respectively. The combination of Pap smear with cervicography or with HPV test for detecting CIN 1 or above had same SE and SP of 89.1% and 62.0% respectively. The combination of cervicography and HPV test had SE of 78.9% and SP of 70.4%. Three methods combination showed 93.9% SE and 54.6% SP. The estimated cost per method was highest in three methods combination (117,000 won) and lowest in Pap smear alone (12,000 won). The cost for detection of one case of cervical neoplasia was highest in combination of cervicography and HPV test (241,907 won) and lowest in Pap smear alone (25,385 won).

The combinations of each method showed increased SE. These combinations, however, had low SP and high cost than individual method. Cervicography or HPV test alone should not be considered as an alternative to Pap smear for cervical cancer screening because its cost-effectiveness is not significantly better than that of Pap smear.