Disclaimer: This topic was approved by New Wave herself. Gentlemen...brace yourselves, seriously.
Now I didn't get first hand experience with this, but my friend who is doing a rotation with HIV medicine told me this interesting tid bit that I have never heard of before.
Did you know that there are anal pap smears? A regular pap smear is a screening tool for cervical cancer. The Human Papilloma Virus is a virus that can increase your risk for cervical cancer...and from what I've learned now, anal cancer. An anal pap smear is for those who have anal sex(either male or female), especially if you are infected by HIV. I tried to look up the speculum they use for this but my search brought up adult toy sites and, well, I quickly gave up.
For those of the male persuasion that don't know what happens in a pap smear, here's what happens: The doctor uses the speculum to keep the vagina, and in this case, the anus open. Then they take either a brush tip or a wooden spatula and scrape off cells and tissue. They take the sample and put it on a slide and look for abnormal cells. Who KNEW that they did this for the anus. Crazy.
It made me think though. In OBGYN we don't usually ask women if they have anal sex, and I'm wondering if it would be beneficial to screen for this. Interesting huh? hehe.
2 comments:
Just to add to this,
I recently learned that it is becoming routine to check for gonorrhea in gay males in the anus and in the throat (but no pap smear, just a regular culture).
I remember HPV causing anal cancer, but haven't heard about checking for it.
funny after i read your comment rancid i saw that commercial about HPV. Yeah I think at the HIV clinic my friend works at she said it's like a regular annual pap for the men...they get the pap and also GC and chlamydia...
Post a Comment