What does low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion mean?

Cervical cancer is not only a malignant tumor with a relatively high incidence rate, but also a relatively high mortality rate, so every woman should take good care to prevent the occurrence of cervical cancer. And if appropriate measures are taken to treat cervical cancer in the early stages, the progression of the disease can be controlled and the spread of cancer cells to other parts of the body can be prevented. So what does low-grade cervical squamous intraepithelial lesion mean?

The term cervical squamous cell neoplasia (CIN) was widely used in the 1970s and 1980s for pathological diagnosis. However, a large number of studies in the past 20 years have revealed that cervical cancer and precancerous lesions are related to HPV infection. Further studies have found that CIN is not a single continuous lesion of varying degrees, but can be divided into two types of lesions with significantly different clinical pathological processes: low-grade lesions and high-grade lesions.

Squamous intraepithelial lesion of the cervix is ​​a precancerous lesion and is not what people call cancer. Because of this lesion, most people can reverse to normal, especially low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions; some patients can maintain their original lesion state; a small number of people can progress to carcinoma in situ or microinvasive carcinoma, etc.

It should be noted here that the low-grade, moderate-grade and severe intraepithelial lesions, especially moderate-grade or high-grade cervical squamous intraepithelial lesions, diagnosed clinically through pathological histological examination actually contain very few cases of carcinoma in situ or microinvasive carcinoma. This is because the tissue obtained is a very small tissue bitten off by biopsy forceps in the clinic. In certain individual cases, it cannot fully reflect the overall picture of cervical lesions due to factors such as differences in doctors' experience. This is a problem with routine bite biopsies. Therefore, under certain circumstances, we advocate multiple biopsies of small tissues. In addition, cervical conization is performed on patients with moderate and high-grade intraepithelial lesions. We call this type of treatment diagnostic treatment. That is to say, after surgery or high-frequency electrosurgical cone biopsy, the final specimen is still diagnosed as moderate or high-grade intraepithelial lesions by pathological examination, which means that the patient has achieved the treatment goal of preventing the occurrence of cervical cancer.

Of course, these patients should also be followed up regularly, especially those infected with HPV or those diagnosed with carcinoma in situ or early invasive cancer through pathological examination of cone biopsy tissue. In principle, cone biopsy only achieves a diagnostic purpose. Clinically, close follow-up or further expansion of the scope of surgery or adoption of other treatment methods are still needed based on the final results of pathological examination and the resection margin.