Title thesis: Improving Cervical Cancer Prevention by HPV Self-sampling, Colposcopy and Biomarkers.

Romy van Baars explored in her thesis alternative methodologies aiming at improvements at various steps of the cervical cancer screening, including sampling for primary testing, secondary (i.e. triage) testing, and diagnostic (colposcopy and pathology) work-up steps. Van Baars evaluated, for example, the clinical sensitivity and sensitivity for CIN2+ of HPV testing using a combination of the Viba brush and a solid-state sample carrier, the FTA cartridge, for dry transport of self-collected brush samples. FTA-based self-collection might be valuable when a liquid-based medium cannot be used, for example in screening of nonresponders and in low-resource settings. Van Baars concluded that the clinical performance of hrHPV detection is determined by both the sample collection system and the test method.

Subsequently van Baars investigated acceptability of the Evalyn Brush, and its suitability as a dry transport system compared to concurrently physician-obtained samples for the detection of hrHPV. She concluded that self-sampling using the dry Evalyn Brush system is as good as a physician-taken sample for hrHPV detection. Furthermore, the Evalyn Brush was a highly acceptable self-sampling device to 98% of the women in this study.