What is going on with epithelial cells in gynecological examination?

The so-called gynecological epithelial cell examination is actually the vaginal exfoliated cell examination in what we often call gynecological examination. There are many ways to perform vaginal exfoliated cell examination, such as vaginal smear examination, cervical scraping examination, and epithelial cell examination inside the vaginal vault. It should be noted that the sources of the examination objects used in these epithelial cell examination methods are not the same.

When performing a gynecological examination of epithelial cells, although the examination area is mostly concentrated on vaginal exfoliated cells, these cells can come from the fallopian tubes, the uterine cavity or the cervical canal, and of course in more cases they can come from the vagina itself. There are great advantages in judging various potential or existing gynecological diseases through vaginal exfoliated cell examination. It is especially wise to conduct vaginal cell exfoliation examination for some serious gynecological tumors.

Generally, there are many ways to classify the results of vaginal epithelial exfoliative cell examination during gynecological examination, which can be the common Pap classification method or the TBS classification method. If it is the Pap classification system, grade II indicates a gynecological inflammatory disease, grade III indicates a gynecological cancer or tumor disease, and if it is grade IV, it is very likely that a highly malignant tumor disease needs to be suspected.

Although epithelial cell examination is often required during gynecological examinations, this examination method is not 100% accurate. In some cases, false positive smears may occur during the examination, resulting in inaccurate examination. This inaccuracy is mainly caused by mistaking columnar epithelial cells and basal cells for cancer cells during examination.