If you have received normal Pap test results, but subsequently found out you had cervical cancer, you could be the victim of a Pap smear misdiagnosis.

Cervical cancer used to be a leading cause of cancer death among women until the advent of the Pap test in the 1940s. George Nicholas Papanicolaou found he could see the differences between normal and malignant cervical cells when he viewed the cells smeared on slides under a microscope.

The relatively simple procedure is what we now know as the Pap smear or Pap test.

Today the test results continue to rely upon the actual human viewing of cells under a microscope, and while untold numbers of women have been saved by the early detection of cervical cancer or of the pre-cancerous cells, some women have fallen victim to a Pap smear misdiagnosis.

Pap Smear Misdiagnosis Can Lead to Death

Even though cervical cancer remains one of the most preventable forms of cancers, the test results of a Pap smear are dependent upon human determination.

Medical lab technicians view hundreds of slides a day, and just because of the sheer numbers, there is a chance they will miss catching some abnormal-looking cells. One example is a Florida woman who received normal results on her Pap smear died in 2011 from cervical cancer.

The woman had last received a Pap test in 2008, which did show cancer cells were present. The woman’s husband filed a lawsuit against the medical lab over the Pap smear misdiagnosis. In 2014, a jury agreed with the man’s claim that the lab had been negligent. The woman’s family received a $15.8 million award because of what was deemed as a wrongful death.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Pap smears were completed in more than 17 million doctor’s offices and 3.5 million hospital visits in the year 2014 alone.

Each individual Pap test has to be viewed by a lab technician who is trained to identify pre-cancerous and cancerous cells. Even the most astute lab technician could suffer from fatigue after looking at such a large number of slides every shift.

 Cancer Society Guidelines

“Although the Pap test has been more successful than any other screening test in preventing a cancer, it’s not perfect. One of the limitations of the Pap test is that the results need to be examined by the human eye, so an accurate analysis of the hundreds of thousands of cells in each sample is not always possible,” states the American Cancer Society.

Now, new guidelines might compound the problem for those who receive a Pap smear misdiagnosis. For decades, the American Cancer Society recommended women receive annual Pap tests starting at age 18 or whenever they became sexually active.

The new guidelines indicate women should have a Pap test every three years from age 21 through 29; women ages 30 to 65 are instructed to undergo a Pap test and HPV test every five years.

If a woman age 45 receives a Pap smear misdiagnosis and doesn’t receive another Pap test for five years, there is a possibility she could suffer from full-blown cervical cancer by the time the next test is due.