I’ve never had a normal smear, my first one was high risk hpv, my second one a year later was high risk hpv with borderline cell changes and my third one a year and a half after that was also hpv with borderline hpv changes.
I went to my colposcopy, at the appointment I was told she was concerned about some areas as they were dense, mosaic, and there were some larger areas lighting up quickly. I didn’t have any treatment for this, is this normal to always wait for biopsy results before having treatment? The nurse informed me that my smear was borderline cell changes but she feels as though there are higher grade changes. She also said that my biopsy results should be back in 2-3 weeks, is this normal? I’ve seen lots of people posting that they were told it would be 4-6 weeks?
@Cait3 Hey, hope you’re feeling ok after your biopsy! I think it varies from person to person, some people they have to have biopsy then they decide if a LLETZ is required and others they have the LLETZ there and then!
I had to have a biopsy before my LLETZ, they took 3 samples and my results came back within 2 weeks to say I had CIN3 so next step was treatment(they also told me I’d get my results within 4-6 weeks)! Try not to read into the waiting times too much, I’ve read on here and even ladies who have been diagnosed with cc had to wait the full 6 weeks to find out their results so I think the wait solely depends on how quick the hospitals process things and the areas wait times!
Hi Cait, your experience sounds quite similar to mine - I had smear come back high risk HPV with low grade changes, gyno expected to just check me out and then send me away for a year, but instead I had very similar to you (dense areas with punctuation) and she ended up taking 5 biopsies. My gyno wouldn’t tell me any of this at the time but I saw all this in her notes afterwards. She gave me a leaflet and said I might need a LLETZ but to be honest after looking around here I knew from her notes that was pretty likely. I was also quite surprised not to have just been treated at the time but I think this is quite common (and to be completely honest I wish she’d just done it at the time rather than leaving me to worry for weeks on end when it was quite obvious I needed one but ho hum). I got my results back after 4 weeks and I have a mix of CIN1,2 and 3 so I’m booked in for a LLETZ in April. I think prepare yourself for that being a possible outcome and read up on LLETZ if you find that helpful. Sending you my best wishes, none of this stuff is a lot of fun and to be honest no-one really tells any of us enough about what’s going on.
I think it’s normal if your smear and what they see at colposcopy differ that they want to biopsy to confirm.
My smear says high grade severe dyskaryosis and I spoke to a lovely lady on the Jo’s trust helpline (who is a colposcopist by profession) who said that I will likely have a LLETZ at my colposcopy appointment if they agree with my smear results (CIN3) or suspect anything worse.
If the colposcopy shows that it might be CIN1 or CIN2 then they might biopsy before going ahead with the LLETZ to make sure it’s necessary.
If you take that logic in reverse, I think she wants to confirm that her visual impression of cell changes is correct and the smear was not seeing the full picture. I think they don’t want to do the LLETZ if it isn’t necessary!
I can’t speak for your situation and I am certainly no expert, but that leads me to believe that since your colposcopist wasn’t sure she agreed with your smear, she wants to be sure before going ahead with the procedure.
Just wanted to update here - I had my colposcopy today and they didn’t do the LLETZ! She said that she wanted to wait for biopsy results because I’m under 35 and have no children. She said that before she looked at anything so it wasn’t based on cell results. Wanted to add to my previous answer, which whilst was based on advice from a colposcopist, wasn’t in line with my experience today!
