There’s only ONE way to ensure significant protection from cervical cancer

Parents, you have two choices if you want to protect your daughter from cervical cancer.

Choice one: You can ask your daughter’s pediatrician to give her the Gardasil vaccine. It’s expensive, potentially dangerous, it does not protect against all strains of the HPV virus that causes the disease, and nobody knows for sure yet how well it actually works.

Choice two: Teach your daughter to be diligent about getting regular gynecological exams, which includes a pap smear.

As I’ve mentioned many times before, choice two is the ONLY way to ensure significant protection against cervical cancer.

In a new study from Sweden, researchers followed medical records of 1,230 women who had been diagnosed with cervical cancer. After five years, the Swedish team found that women whose cancers were detected during routine screening exams had a 92 percent cure rate and a 95 percent survival rate.

Women whose cancers were diagnosed after the onset of cervical cancer symptoms had a 66 percent cure rate and a 69 percent survival rate after five years.

Among the women who died during the study period, about half had not been screened within five years prior to their diagnosis.

This very clearly confirms what I found out through my own experience with cervical cancer — that this is a highly treatable and survivable disease, but only if women are diligent about getting regular checkups.

Women who choose Gardasil will, sadly, learn that their cancer protection was, in fact, not a shield, but a sieve.

Sources:
“Screening Pap Smears Tied to Higher Cure Rate” Charles Bankhead, MedPage Today, 3/2/12, medpagetoday.com