Info about Warts
Cervical Lumps
Lumps in the vagina or cervix are often called dysplasia, which is the abnormal growth of cells that are non cancerous. They can grow in any part of the body, among them the vagina or cervix.
Most doctors and medical professionals refer to cervical dysplasia as “cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (GIN) they both mean the same thing. There are varying degrees of severity of CIN, from CIN I (mild) to GIN Ill (severe). Classification is based on how much of the surface tissue, epithelium, is affected, and on the kind and degree of cell changes that are found. Ask your doctor how your dysplasia was classified by the lab pathologist. Most cases of CIN are mild. If allowed to go unchecked and untreated, it can progress in severity and possibly change to cancer.
This is why its important to have a Pap smear done once a year so that these problems can be caught early. On the other hand, a number of dysplasia cases resolve on their own. Unfortunately, there is no way of telling if a case will resolve, or progress, and at what pace.
The human papillomavirus (HPV), genital warts, is associated with CIN and cervical cancer, this is only an association, and not every case of CIN can be linked to HPV. A few other groups at risk for CIN have been identified:
• Women who first became sexually active at a young age - under 18.
• Women who have had multiple sexual partners, or whose partner has had multiple partners. Again, these are only associations. Nothing yet has been proven to be the cause of GIN or cervical cancer. Some medical folks also suspect that women, or women whose partners, work at a job where they are exposed to carcinogens may also be at a higher risk for GIN and cervical cancer.
Cervical dysplasia is not transmitted as are sexually transmitted diseases. If it happens that HPV is associated with a case of CIN, the Pap result will come back reading abnormal with HPV changes. You need to know if your Pap results indicated HPV, or if they only showed dysplasia.
• Treatment
Treatment usually involves colposcopy and a tissue biopsy. Through colposcopy, your doctor can directly view your cervix and detect any abnormalities with a special microscope. Not surprisingly, this microscope is called a colposcope. If your doctor sees any abnormal cells through the colposcope, she removes them and sends them to a lab so that the problem can be accurately diagnosed. If the material is non cancerous, having them removed is all that is necessary.