Abnormal Papsmears??
Find a Conversation
| Fri, 09-24-2004 - 2:31pm |
I have a question, my girlfriend recently had a pap smear done. She is clean and has only been with one partner for the past year. He also was tested clean, and yet her pap smear came out abnormal. She is really worried and doesnt know what is happening. Her boyfriend smokes and i was wondering if that had anything to do with it? Or if it is HPV? She is stressing that she thinks she wont be able to have kids. She is scheduled to have a coloscopy (sp?), which im assuming they take tissue from her cervix and analyze it. Does this procedure hurt, or has anyone gone through it? Does anyone have any information on reasons why papsmears are abnormal, or if its common..etc? She is kinda shy and would never post something like this. Any suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks!

An estimate is that 50-70% of sexually active men and women have HPV of some type. There
are many different kinds.
I had a coloscopy. Yes, it pinches a little but it is not extreme pain. What they do is cut off a tiny tiny little piece of the infected part of the cervix and test it -- this will tell them if the abnormal cells are precancerous, and how severe the abnormality is. Depending on what her doctor decides, she may have to have a cryo - which is when they freeze the abnormal cells off, or she could a leep done - which is when they burn off the cells. Both of these procedures cause a little bit of discomfort and she can't sex for 2-3 weeks after and she may have some bleeding following either of these procedures. They each take about 20 minutes.
Sometimes the procedure gets rid of all the bad cells, but other times they must be repeated. Also depending on the cells, her doctor may decide to do nothing and wait and see -- sometimes these abnormal cells go away of their own -- but once a woman has HPV - she has it in body for life. Like I said a large portion of sexually active women have HPV but will never even have an abnormal pap - it just depends on her body and the type of HPV she has been infected with.
As far as fertily goes - tell your friend not to worry. I am 8 months prego and have had no complications during my whole pregnancy. It is very rare that HPV would cause infertily - usually it happens to women who don't get pap smears for a long time and don't know they have HPV so the cells get really bad. That's why it very important that your friend follow all her doctor's orders and that she gets pap smears every year for the rest of her life b/c it can always come back but generally doesn't. I have heard that smoking increases a woman's chance of having abnormal cells (if she has HPV) so if she smokes she needs to stop. Her bf smoking has nothing to do her cells.
As far as men and HPV go -- they have no signs or symptons and they do not test men for HPV for a number of reasons - mostly b/c it is a very expensive test and the results aren't very accurate. So men generally just spread the disease but have no signs or problems.
Just a note -- The kind of HPV that causes external warts can affect both men and women -- causing warts on the man's penis and the woman's vagina but that is not the type of HPV you are talking about.
There is an STD message board here at ivillage. Have your friend sign up for ivillage, she can make up a name, and post any other questions and read what others have to say about HPV. Also she should talk to her doctor more and get info from him or her.
An abnormal pap can be caused by many things, including a yeast infection, irritation, recent sexual activity (before having a pap, you should not have sex for 48 hours
It's good that she's getting it checked out but it may not be anything terrible.