MUFP staining-a pathfinder in the study of cervical cytology in rapid and economic manner

ABSTRACT Background: Invasive carcinoma of the cervix is one of the most common cancers in the world and it is preventable by screening methods. The traditional screening method is the Pap smear. As practiced conventionally Pap stain is expensive utilising a considerable amount of alcohol and consumes a lot of time. Need for minimal turnaround time for assessing cervical pap smears has encouraged innovations in staining techniques that require lesser staining time with unequivocal cell morphology. Ultrafast Papanicolaou (UFP) stain was introduced which reduces staining time to 90 seconds and also enhances the quality. However, reagents required for this were not easily available. Hence, Modified Ultrafast Papanicolaou (MUFP) stain was introduced subsequently. Aims and Objectives: General: To study spectrum of cervical lesions on conventional PAP smear. Specific: To find out whether MUFP gives reliable staining details compared to routine PAP stain. Materials and Methods: Eighty women who were eligible for a pap smear and met the inclusion criteria. Samples were collected in conventional technique using Ayre’s spatula, cytobrush, Cusco’s speculum .Two smears were prepared and stained by MUFP and conventional PAP stain. Scores were given on four parameters: background of smears, overall staining pattern, cell morphology and nuclear staining. Quality Index (QI) was calculated from ratio of total score achieved to maximum score possible. Students t-test was applied to evaluate the efficacy of MUFP in comparison with conventional PAP stain. Results: The study showed that the modified Papanicolaou method took three minutes and the standard Papanicolaou method took 30 minutes to stain each bunch of slides. The cost of alcohol used per smear was Rs5 and Rs 25 per smear in the modified pap method and standard Papanicolaou method respectively. The staining characteristics in the modified method were better than the standard method and there was no compromise in the diagnosis. Conclusion: MUFP staining is quick, reliable and can be done with easily available reagents and is very useful especially in underprivileged laboratories.