Story at a glance
- Researchers found 1.4 million received a manual pelvic exam unnecessarily.
- Health experts say cervical cancer screening is not recommended for females under 21.
- Researchers suspect it could be due to outdated OB/GYN practices.
New research suggests many teenage girls and young women in the U.S. are undergoing unnecessary and invasive pelvic exams and Pap smear tests, which can lead to false-positive testing, overtreatment and anxiety.
A recent study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that a majority of women ages 15 to 20 who underwent a manual pelvic exam during a gynecologist visit likely didn’t need one.
“Parents of adolescents and young women should be aware that cervical cancer screening is not recommended routinely in this age group,” said study author Dr. George Sawaya, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco.
Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University of California, San Francisco analyzed data from September 2011 to September 2017 from more than 3,400 respondents to a survey.
The research found that in one year, 1.4 million of the 2.6 million young women who received such an exam did not need to do so. The exams involve applying pressure to a woman’s abdomen while inserting two fingers into the vagina to feel for unusual growths or abnormalities.
Sawaya also stressed that “pelvic exams are not necessary prior to getting most contraceptives and are often not needed to screen for sexually transmissible infections.”
The study noted that the unnecessary tests add greatly to health care costs, estimating the costs of unnecessary pelvic exams and Pap tests in females younger than 21 to be about $123 million a year.
Researchers say it’s unclear exactly why so many unnecessary examinations are taking place, but it could be out of habit from outdated OB/GYN practices.
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