 I am Dr. Poonam Patil working as medical oncologist in Manipal Hospital here in Bangalore. A cervical cancer is the easiest gynecological cancer to be diagnosed in an early stage and it can even be diagnosed in a pre-canceral stage. And most of the times it is the symptoms that the woman presents with and the doctor will then examine her and see whether there is anything in the cervix and they often end up doing a pap smear. Pap smear is nothing but a liquid cytology test which looks at the scrapings of the cervix and these scrapings are then examined under the microscope. So this is a very simple office-based test and it can detect not only cancer but it can even detect pre-cancerous cells. There's another test known as HPV detection test. Now we know that human papilloma virus infection predisposes to cervix cancer. So this HPV test also can be done and if somebody is tested positive for this HPV test it doesn't mean that they have cancer. It just means that they are more prone to develop cervix cancer. So if the HPV test turns out to be positive they have to be very regularly going to the gynecologist for a follow-up. If any of these pap smear test and HPV test both come positive then the next step is to do a colposcopy and a pelvic examination and if there is any growth identified then a biopsy is done and it is this biopsy which is the confirmatory diagnosis of cancer of the cervix.