“I tested positive for high-risk HPV and had to have biopsies taken. In 2020 I had both a Pap and HPV co-testing. I had a normal Pap but high-risk HPV. The next year, I co-tested again and had the same results, a negative Pap but high-risk HPV.
Because I’m over 30 with 2 years of high- risk HPV, I had to have a colposcopy which is a procedure that looks for precancerous cells. I had biopsies taken, luckily benign. I am so glad they co-tested me as high-risk HPV increases your risk of cervical cancer and Pap Smears can sometimes miss precancerous cells.
Everything has been normal so far but it’s still something we are monitoring! And very scary! When this happened, I asked around and apparently this is very common in women. And something we should normalize talking about!
It’s so important for women to get regularly screened and to have BOTH a Pap + HPV co-test. Studies and statistics show that the Pap + HPV co-test in particular has caught 94.1% of cervical cancers and 99.7% of cervical pre-cancers, and has successfully identified 70% of cancers that were missed by the HPV test alone”