 I am Dr. Shashi Kailashwari Sagar, consultant obstetrician and gynecologist at Manipal Hospital, Millers Road, Bangalore. Today, let's talk about pap smears. Why is it important to have pap smears? Well, pap smear is a screening test for cervical cancer. This test is done periodically in Perman to make sure that they don't have any pre-cancerous lesion in the cervix. Pap smear is named after person Pap Penuklau, who first described it. Who are the persons eligible to do a pap smear? All women who are sexually active and between the ages of 25 to 50 years need to do it once every three years. Women more than 50 years can do it once in five years till the age of 65. Now, what is it now that we know how it is done, why it is done? It is a screening test for cervical cancer. What happens here is we look at the cervix to make sure that there are no any abnormal changes in the cervix. We then sample a few cells from the cervix using a brush and this is sent for psychological examination. The pathologist studies these cells and then tells us if there are any pre-cancerous or abnormal cells or cancerous cells in that slide prepared. Whenever there is any abnormality, then the further treatment follows. It is important to have a periodic examination of the cervix, that is repeated pap smears to make sure that we detect cervical cancer in a very early stage. Cervical cancer is caused by a virus called human papilloma virus. There are many strains of the virus of which few of them are have the potential to cause cancer or enogenized warts. A vaccine for this has now been developed and if when a person is vaccinated with this vaccine, usually children, any child above 11 years of age, are eligible to take this vaccine. For children less than 14 years, only two doses of the vaccine is recommended. For others more than 14 years, three doses of vaccine over a period of six months is the recommended dose. Despite being vaccinated, it is important to do the pap smears because any pre-cancerous lesion can be detected and treated at a very early stage. Along with pap smears, there is another test called human papilloma virus DNA testing, HPV DNA screening test. This test tests for high risk cancer causing human papilloma virus in the cervix. The frequency of this test is once in five years and if there are no high risk virus strains detected in this test, then unlikely the lady is going to get Cervical cancer. Even then it is still recommended that a woman be regular with her pap smears and do it periodically. Thank you.