A comparison of preoperative exfoliative cervical cytology with subsequent histology.

A comparison of the preoperative cervical cytology with the subsequent histology in 441 cases showed a wide variation in the prediction of the histological diagnoses by cytology. There was a precise correlation in 66% of cases. The false negative rate was 11.5% and the false positive rate was 11.2%. These data illustrate the difficulty managing premalignant and malignant disease of the uterine cervix using cytology alone for guidance.