According to new data from the CDC and researchers at the University of California San Francisco, 1.4 million patients aged 15 to 20 may have received unnecessary, invasive vaginal exams within a year's time
According to new estimates, about 54 percent of pelvic exams performed on patient 15 to 20, within a year’s time, may have been baseless. Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images Millions of girls and young women may have been subjected to invasive pelvic exams and pap smears they didn’t need, according to estimates from researchers at the University of California San Francisco and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A new study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, states that as many as 1.
The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology no longer recommends pelvic exams — which involve a physician inserting two fingers into the vagina, to check for abnormalities or infection — for most people under the age of 21, and hasn’t since 2009. If a patient presents with particular symptoms, such as pain or the inability to insert a tampon; or if they are pregnant; or if they are getting an IUD, a manual exam could be warranted.
And yet pap smears, according to the study, tended to accompany pelvic exams. The researchers analyzed survey data from 2011 to 2017, sourced from 3,410 girls and young women aged 15 to 20. Very few respondents reported STI treatment , pregnancy , or IUD use within a 12-month period. Still, within the same time frame, about 2.6 million girls and young women in the same age bracket reported having received a pelvic exam, and 2.2 million said they’d received pap smears.
Dr. George Sawaya — professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, and the study’s lead author — told NBC that the team didn’t know why these procedures remained so widespread, although it may have something to do with habit. Nonetheless, with high profile incidents of sexual abuse by medical practitioners — Larry Nassar, the former doctor for the Olympic gymnastic team; George Tyndall, the University of Southern California gynecologist whom dozens, potentially even hundreds, of former patients have accused of misconduct — in the news cycle, Sawaya told NBC that researchers “want to empower girls and young women to ask, ‘Why do I need this exam?’” if their gynecologist suggests one.
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