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How Often Do You Need the HPV Test?

Program: HPV Test vs. The Pap Smear: New testing methods that could save your life
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Marie Savard:

The last question you asked was how often do you need it? Well, for 95% of women, 95 out of 100 of us who test negative with the HPV test and the Pap, we don't need to be retested. It's such a good test, so reliable, that we don't need to be retested for at least another 3 years, and that's the important point where the insurance companies fit in, because they are happy to reimburse for this test, and they do because in the long run it's going to save women from undergoing those colposcopies, unnecessary biopsies, and things that really would be avoided if you were more vigilant and monitoring only the women who had those high-risk virus that they didn't get rid of. The low-risk virus we didn't even talk about, but some of the colposcopies are done because women have low-risk virus that doesn't even show up on the HPV test, and we don't care about those viruses because they don't cause cervical cancer. The whole idea of colposcopy and the HPV test is who has a risk for cervical cancer and who does not.

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