Cervical Screening Programme, England - 2019-20 [NS]

Call & recall

In 2019-20:

Coverage for ages 25 to 64 years was 72.2%

Cervical cytology

In 2019-20:

3.28 million samples were examined.
(all ages)

Colposcopy

In 2019-20:

191,563 women were referred for colposcopy
(all ages)

This publication presents information about the NHS Cervical Screening Programme (‘the programme’) in England in 2019-20.

It reports on women aged 25 to 64 who are invited for regular screening under the call and recall programme, the screening samples examined by pathology laboratories and subsequent referrals to colposcopy clinics. Women outside of this age group may also be assessed by the programme.

Women between the ages of 25* and 64 are invited for regular cervical screening under the programme, the intent of which is to detect abnormalities within the cervix that could, if undetected and untreated, develop into cervical cancer.

The statistics presented cover the following topic areas:

• Call and recall
• Cervical cytology
• Colposcopy

The associated data tables, interactive visualisation, appendices and quality statement are available on the main publication page:

*Invites are first sent at age 24.5 years.

Report bulletin (this document)

• Presents a detailed summary of the findings from the 2019-20 data collection.
• Further information on the data presented within this report is available in the additional publication resources outlined here.

Data tables

• Contain all relevant statistics for 2019-20.
• Available in Excel and csv formats.

Appendices

Further detail on topics including:

• Publication context
• Coverage definitions
• Changes to the programme
• Data collection

Quality statement:

• Contextual information to aid understanding and presentation of the data including the methods used to compile the statistics and other background information that users may find useful.
• All resources are available from the publication page.

HPV primary screening - implementation

Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) primary screening was fully implemented in December 2019¹. With HPV primary testing, a sample is first tested for HPV and where the test result is positive, a cytology screen is then performed. See appendix J for further details.

This change will affect activity during the year because pathways for HPV primary testing are different from HPV triage testing. See Appendix A for full details on HPV primary screening and HPV triage.

Annual data for 2019-20 includes activity for both HPV triage and HPV primary testing pathways. Therefore, it is difficult to say with certainty which changes are a result of the implementation of HPV primary, and which are the result of other factors.

HPV primary screening – laboratory changes:
The implementation of HPV primary screening across England was completed in December 2019 and resulted in a consolidation of cytology services to 8 sites from the previous 48 sites. Of the 48 laboratories, 3 stopped processing cervical samples prior to 2019-20 and 45 laboratories carried out cervical screening activity during 2019-20. Appendix J has a table summarising these changes².

COVID-19 and the production of statistics

Disruption from the coronavirus illness (COVID-19) is starting to affect the quality of our statistics, such as an increase in non-submissions for some datasets. This report includes new data for the period 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2020, therefore most programme activity is unaffected by COVID-19. However, data collection and submission processes, which continued after 31 March 2020 are more significantly affected by COVID-19 disruption.

Data should be interpreted with care over the COVID-19 period.

COVID-19 – associated changes:

The impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic has minimal impact on this data report.  The data is collected from 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2020. The pandemic started to become evident for the last two weeks of this data report. The effects of the pandemic are likely to be more evident in the 2020-21 report.

¹ https://phescreening.blog.gov.uk/2020/01/23/significant-landmark-as-primary-hpv-screening-is-offered-across-england/

² https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cervical-screening-primary-hpv-screening-implementation/cervical-screening-implementation-guide-for-primary-hpv-screening