Cervical Digital Photography: An Alternative Method to Colposcopy.

OBJECTIVE: This study sought to evaluate the performance of cervical digital photography as an alternative to colposcopy.

METHODS: Colposcopy and cervical digital photography were performed on 228 women. The cervical digital photographs were evaluated through the Internet by three colposcopy experts. The agreement between methods was calculated with kappa and percentages of agreement. Next, the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and diagnostic accuracy were calculated for colposcopy and cervical digital photography. Histology was used as the gold standard (Canadian Task Force Classification of Study Design: II-2).

RESULTS: Cervical digital photography and colposcopy were in agreement in 89.9% of the cases (K = 0.588). Cervical digital photography had higher sensitivity (52.5%) and positive predictive value (60%) than colposcopy (35% and 48.28%, respectively). There were no other significant differences between cervical digital photography and colposcopy: specificity was 91.86% and 91.28%, negative predictive value was 89.3% and 85.8%, and diagnostic accuracy was 84.4% and 80.7%, respectively.

CONCLUSION: Cervical digital photography is a promising alternative method to colposcopy.