Women will be able to detect cervical cancer at home using a baguette by Sarcelle health.
Health Sarcelle
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Health Sarcelle
The Food and Drug Administration approved the first alternative to the United States at the Maison au smear PAP, a generations of women feared and often found painful.
The new Teal Health apparatus will offer a “favorite experience”, said the company in its advertisement and also aims to increase screening rates by making the procedure more practical.
Traditionally, gynecologists have inserted a cold metal speculum deep into a woman’s vagina to scrape the cervical cells.
The Sarcelle wand – “built with empathy,” said the company – uses a stamp to perceive a vaginal sample. Women will then send the sample to a laboratory that will project for HPV (human papillomavirus), the virus which causes almost all cervical cancers. An increasing set of research revealed that HPV tests were very precise.
FDA approval on Friday follows a study based in the United States which revealed that home screening was just as effective as that made in a doctor’s office. The study also revealed that women preferred self-assessment at home and said they would be more likely to stay up to date with cervical cancer screening in this way.
Each year, around 13,000 cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed and more than 4,000 women die from the disease. The rates are considerably decreasing since Dr. Georgios Papanicolaou published an article from 1943 on how to use PAP smear for screening, and it then became common.
But about a quarter of women in the United States are late on such projections, and medical experts say that reduction is the key to the ultimate objective of eliminating cervical cancer. There is also a racial gap, with black and Amerindian women much more likely to die of cervical cancer than white women. The VPH vaccine for adolescents and pre -adolescent girls, introduced in 2007, also led to a global push to fight against the disease in this way.
Testing of cervical cancer at home are already available in several other countries, including Australia and Sweden.
Teal Health says that its auto-test system will be available from next month in California, then expanding. It will be by prescription, by means of a remote service service, for women aged 25 to 65 who are “at a medium risk”. The company claims that it works with insurance companies to ensure the coverage.
