OBJECTIVE:

To evaluate the diagnostic concordance between cytology and colposcopy with respect to the histopathological diagnosis of cervical cancer in women from the state of San Luis Potosí who attended a second-level care hospital.

MATERIALS AND METHODS:

Correlational study performed in a second-level care hospital in the municipality of San Luis Potosí, between 2015 and 2017. Inclusion criteria: to gather three reports of Papanicolaou, colposcopy and histopathology tests based on Richart’s classification, to be users of the hospital’s colposcopy clinic and to have signed the informed consent. To evaluate the diagnostic concordance, taking the histopathological result as a reference, the Kappa test was performed.

RESULTS:

We studied 379 patients with a mean age of 34.61 years. The sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive value of the Papanicolaou test were: 95.60, 6.60, 96.13 and 5.82%, respectively. The sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive value of colposcopy were: 95.98, 33.33, 98.90 and 11.76%, respectively. When doing the Kappa test the outcome for Papanicolaou was: 0.021 (p = 0.677) and for colposcopy 0.154 (p = 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS:

The sensitivity of the Papanicolaou diagnostic test and colposcopy was high as was the positive predictive value. It is important to analyze the variables that could be causing the diagnostic discordance between Papanicolaou-colposcopy-histopathology.