“Five minutes in five years.” So says the claim of the communication campaign that the Emilia-Romagna Region addresses to twenty-five-year-olds for cervical screening. From this year, in fact, the first call for screening has been postponed to 30 years, starting with women born in 1998 and vaccinated with at least two doses of HPV, both administered before the age of 15. In Emilia-Romagna, 25-year-olds already vaccinated within 15 years with at least two doses against the papilloma virus will have their first test at the age of 30, in 2028.
“The remodulation of the regional screening program, which will allow us to further improve cancer prevention – underlines the Councilor for Health Policies, Raffaele Donini – is coming to life. With this communication campaign, we are calling on young women to take care of their health. I take this opportunity to remind you that adhering to screening is important because the numbers confirm that prevention and early diagnosis are fundamental”.
The communication campaign tools developed by the Region are various: the already vaccinated twenty-five-year-olds are receiving a letter, at home and via an electronic health record, from the Health Trusts explaining the reasons for the postponement and a postcard. Here they will also find a QR-code which refers to the dedicated web page for more information (https://salute.regione.emilia-romagna.it/screening/cervice-uterina). Posters of the campaign will be posted in Consultories, Screening Centers and Community Houses and mini-clips will be online on the social channels of the Region throughout the month of April. The campaign recalls that screenings – such as HPV – require a commitment of a few minutes, but are invaluable because, by accepting the invitation, we take care of our health.
How screening works in Emilia-Romagna
The screening program offers the Pap-test, with active invitation, every three years, to women aged 25 to 29 born before 1998 and to women born after 1998 if not vaccinated with at least two doses of HPV vaccine within 15 years; the HPV test, every 5 years for all women aged 30 to 64, the most effective test for the prevention and early diagnosis of cervical cancer in this age group. In recent months, the Regional Council has approved the remodulation of the screening program because women vaccinated against the Papilloma Virus with at least two doses, both administered before the age of 15, have a very low risk of developing invasive cancer of the uterine cervix before 30 years, but remains a rare event even after 30 years. Furthermore, having a Pap smear could expose them to a risk of overdiagnosis and overtreatment at an age which in most cases precedes the first pregnancy. If done before the age of 30, the screening test is not useful because in rare cases it can lead to the identification of lesions that often regress spontaneously at a young age. In fact, HPV is a virus that causes a very frequent infection, which most people catch at least once in their life but which in most cases resolves on its own, especially in young women. 25-year-olds who are not already vaccinated against HPV can receive the vaccine for free by age 26. In screening, the whole process is free and organized, from the test to any treatment and subsequent checks.
Data from Emilia-Romagna
In Emilia-Romagna there are 160,000 women who annually undergo the prevention test for cervical cancer and about a thousand who are diagnosed with pre- or cancerous lesions. In Emilia-Romagna the program involves over 1,230,000 resident and domiciled women and has been active since 1996 for the 25-64 age group with Pap tests and starting from 2016 with HPV tests for those aged between 30 and 64. The results: among those who perform the HPV test, one in 12 women is positive, but only less than half (40%) are invited to perform an in-depth colposcopy, as the triage test (Pap test) is also positive . Among the women subjected to this examination, the presence of a lesion emerges in one in every five. Fortunately, most of these lesions are still in the precancerous stage: the program detects about one precancerous lesion for every 132 women and one tumor for every 5,000 women who join the screening.