Testing: women suffer ills of neglect.Life may be full of missed opportunities, but failure to seize two vital ones-routine testing for chlamydia chlamydia (kləmĭd`ēə), genus of microorganisms that cause a variety of diseases in humans and other animals. Psittacosis, or parrot fever, caused by the species Chlamydia psittaci, and cervical cancer-can lead to infertility and, in the latter instance, death. Widespread testing for chlamydia could spare scores of women the consequences of pelvic inflammatory disease pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), infection of the female reproductive organs, usually resulting from infection with the bacteria that cause chlamydia or gonorrhea. , researchers report in the May 23 New England Journal of Medicine The New England Journal of Medicine (New Engl J Med or NEJM) is an English-language peer-reviewed medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. It is one of the most popular and widely-read peer-reviewed general medical journals in the world. . Universal screening with a Pap test Pap test, Pap smear, or Papanicolaou test (păp'ənē`kəlou), medical procedure used to detect cancer of the uterine cervix. for cervical cancer could prevent most of the 5,000 deaths in the United States each year, a government panel advised on April 3. Chlamydia is a common sexually transmitted disease sexually transmitted disease (STD) or venereal disease, term for infections acquired mainly through sexual contact. Five diseases were traditionally known as venereal diseases: gonorrhea, syphilis, and the less common granuloma inguinale, , with more than 4 million new cases diagnosed in the United States each year. Many other cases go unrecognized because the disease is often symptomfree. Untreated, it can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility, and chronic pelvic pain Women and Pelvic pain Most women (and some men), at some time in their lives, experience pelvic pain. When the condition persists for longer than 3 months, it is called chronic pelvic pain (CPP). . A study of 2,607 single, sexually active women at the Group Health Cooperative Group Health Cooperative, based in Seattle, Washington, is a consumer-governed nonprofit healthcare system. Established in 1947, it today provides coverage and care for about 540,000 people in Washington and Idaho and is one of the largest private employers in Washington. of Puget Sound, a health plan in the Pacific Northwest, found that women who were not tested for chlamydia were almost twice as likely to develop pelvic inflammatory disease as women who were tested-and, if necessary, treated. "Our study provides evidence that . . . the incidence of pelvic inflammatory disease can be reduced," concluded Delia Scholes of Group Health and her colleagues. Although screening can virtually eliminate the risk of death from cervical cancer, thousands of women each year die because they can't afford to obtain testing, a consensus panel at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., concluded last month. "Cervical cancer is a disease of the economically disadvantaged," asserts chairwoman Patricia S. Braly of Louisiana State University Medical Center in New Orleans. Half of the 15,000 women newly diagnosed with cervical cancer each year have never had a Pap test; 10 percent more have not been screened in 5 years. The women least likely to be tested-and the women with the highest cervical cancer rates-are uninsured, over 65, Hispanic, older African American, or rural and poor. |
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