Cervical cancer screening in the UK may be changing in our near future. When women have the smear test there is a one in ten chance that the test can be unreadable. When women receive a phone call from their doctors telling them they have to repeat the test it can cause anxiety.

Laboratories using the new method are reporting huge drops in their inadequate slides. Instead of the old method (scraping off some cells from the cervix and smearing them onto a slide) the new method uses a plastic brush to transfer the sample in to a vial of fluid.

Another advantage of having the new test is that they can also test for infections and Chlamydia with the same sample. The new test is called liquid based cytology (LBC).

There are some questions out there regarding if this new test can pick up abnormalities better than the old method. Some say yes and some say it does not. Dr. Anne Szarewski, clinical consultant and Honorary Senior Lecturer at Cancer Research UK Centre for Epidemiology said "Even if LBC is not better at picking up abnormalities, just reducing the number of inadequate smears makes the change worthwhile".