Postmenopausal women should still go for a regular Pap smear test to screen for cervical cancer, a physician at Cathay General Hospital said.
Ho Chih-ming (何志明), director of the hospital’s Gynecologic Oncology Center, cited the case of a 70-year-old woman, surnamed Chiu (邱), who worked at a court in the US and returned to Taiwan after retirement, saying she used to get pap smear tests regularly, but stopped having them about six years ago after her gynecologist retired.
While massaging her stomach because of an abdominal swelling, Chiu experienced vaginal bleeding and went to see a doctor. She was diagnosed with stage two cervical cancer, and was treated with surgery, along with radiotherapy and chemotherapy, Ho said.
The hospital cited another case of a 55-year-old woman, surnamed Wu (吳), who was the head of a listed company and experienced heavy menstrual bleeding due to uterine fibroids.
Wu used to have a pap test every year, but stopped having the test after menopause. She was recently diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma of the cervix, which was also treated with surgery.
Ho said a research team in France has linked the incidence rate of cervical cancer with socioeconomic status, saying that people with lower incomes are twice as likely to develop the disease as people with higher incomes.
However, he said that the center recently treated several women from higher-income households, saying that some of them felt embarrassed to take the test and some thought it was unnecessary for postmenopausal women.
Ho said that data from the Health Promotion Administration showed that 11.2 percent of women who have not had a Pap test in more than three years said they felt embarrassed to take the test, even though a free government-funded Pap test is provided for women older than 30.
The incidence rate of cervical cancer is the seventh highest among all types of cancer in women in Taiwan, with about 1,600 new cases diagnosed and nearly 600 deaths each year, Ho said.
Ho added that the cure rate of cervical cancer before it develops into invasive cancer is nearly 100 percent, so getting a test done regularly is very important.
He urged women who are sexually active to get a Pap test each year, adding that if no abnormality is found for three consecutive years, they could reduce the frequency of taking the test to at least once every three years.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater