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Genital warts

Do I need smears more often because of warts?

Assumed a wart diagnosis would put me on a shorter screening interval. My clinic says no. Are they being complacent?

long_grass 3 months ago
NoteMember experience, not medical advice. Symptoms overlap between infections and only a test can tell them apart.

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They are following the guidance. Warts are caused by low risk types that are not associated with cervical cancer, so a wart diagnosis on its own does not change screening intervals anywhere I know of.

What changes your interval is what the screening test itself finds.

It does feel counterintuitive. The mental model most people have is one virus with one risk level, when actually it is a large family of types doing quite different things.

The thing to actually do is attend the screening you are already invited to. That is where the risk gets managed, and non attendance is a far bigger problem than the interval.

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