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Frank Matthews, MD
De Kalb General Hospital De Kalb Medical Center Decatur, Ga

JAMA. 1989;262(1):32-33.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

Few people besides Dr Koss¹ could have covered the strong and weak points of the Papanicolaou (Pap) smear so well. However, I raise an objection to the subtitle of his article, "A Triumph and a Tragedy." For those of us from the pre-Pap years, the triumph should be trumpeted abroad; the tragedy deserves no more than extremely fine print. There is considerable danger in even suggesting that the two are equal.

To me, a pathology resident at a large university hospital in the late 1950s, it seemed that we did an autopsy a week on some woman between 30 and 50 years of age who had died of invasive cervical carcinoma. Carcinoma in situ was a rarity, found almost exclusively adjacent to invasive tumors; I did not hear of cervical dysplasia until after my training.

Today, solely because of 30 years of using the Pap smear, . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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