The national cervical screening programme provided 284,833 free smear tests and diagnosed 100 women with cervical cancer in the first 12 months of operation, according to figures released today.
The CervicalCheck smear tests were carried out during the period from September 1st, 2008, to August 31st, 2009.
The service is avaiable to over 1.1 million women between the ages of 25 to 60 and was introduced last year with the goal of reducing the incidence and mortality rate of cervical cancer.
The programme is designed to detect changes on the cells of the cervix before they become cancerous.
Almost 85 per cent of those tested returned satisfactory smear test results. which were determined to be negative or normal. Of the remainder, 13.9 per cent showed low grade abnormalities and 1.4 per cent showed high grade abnormalities.
Some 11,100 women underwent a colposcopy for further investigation, and 4,714 women received treatment at colposcopy.
One hundred women were diagnosed with cervical cancer during the reporting period.
Commenting on the results, National Cancer Screening Service director Tony O’Brien said: “The positive predictive value (PPV) of referral for colposcopy measures the proportion of women with positive smear test results who are correctly diagnosed.
"It is one of the most important diagnostic measures of a screening programme as it reflects the probability that a positive test has detected the underlying condition being tested," he said.
The majority of the 284,833 women screened were in the younger age groups with numbers falling with increasing age.
Earlier this year, European Cervical Cancer Association director general Dr Phillip Davies said a combination of screening and schools-based vaccination programmes could ensure near blanket coverage against the disease which kills about 90 Irish women every year.