February 27, 2017 – Cervical Ca

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Anchor lead: Cervical cancer rates have been underestimated, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Rates of cervical cancer have for years been reported as low and falling, but now a new analysis of the data removing women who’ve had their uterus removed from the calculations raises some concerns. William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, reveals the numbers.

Nelson: Cervical cancer is a little bit bigger problem than we thought. For African American women it’s 10.1 per hundred thousand age-adjusted per year, and Caucasian women 4.7deaths per hundred thousand per year. :13

Nelson says prevention is clearly the best strategy.

Nelson: A general healthy approach involving vaccination against human papilloma virus which is the cause of cervical cancer, screening, one would hope in the future as we improve the vaccines and improve vaccine uptake and compliance that we wouldn’t have to worry so much about screening and hopefully those death rates will fall precipitously.  :19

Nelson says everyone should ask their doctor about their own vaccine eligibility. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.