OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the diagnostic capacity of cytological, colposcopic, and histological exams on the detection of premalignant lesions. METHODS: A documentary, retrospective study, with a quantitative approach, conducted in the Cancer Prevention Institute (CPI), in Fortaleza-CE. The population consisted of medical records of 112 women who had the results of these three exams. We adopted the chi-square test and considered it statistically significant when p <0.05. We applied sensitivity and specificity, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) for cytology and colposcopy. RESULTS: From the comparison between the diagnostic tests, we observed that cytology obtained a sensitivity of 89.8%, a specificity of 35.7%, a PPV of 90.7% and an NPV of 33.3%. Colposcopy achieved a sensitivity of 84.7%, a specificity of 50%, a PPV of 92.2% and an NPV of 31.8%. CONCLUSION: We found that these tests presented sensitivity and specificity that can alternate with one another, indicating the association of both to improve the accuracy of diagnosis of premalignant lesions.
Women's health; Cervix neoplasms prevention
