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Question

I was going through old papers, while cleaning a few months back, and came across some old pap smear results. To my utter shock and dismay, I discovered that I had been diagnosed with, (never told, and never treated) with HPV. The paperwork was dated for sometime in 2002. Since then, I have had 3 more children, and about 5 months before I discovered I was pregnant with my 4th child, I had what I thought was to be a normal pap. I was given an abnormal result, in which they scheduled me for a colposcopy, in order to scrape my cervix, due to the test findings stating that I had high level/grade dysplasia cells in my cervix. Upon recieving the results of the colp. scrape, I was immediately scheduled to undergo a L.E.E.P. procedure, and was cleared of the dysplasia... I thought. 3 months after the L.E.E.P. I discovered i was pregnant with my 4th baby, and there were some mild complications throughout the pregnancy, but none too serious. Now I have had my 5th child, and she was born in July of 2011. All of my paps, between baby 4 and 5, were normal. 

My question is: If I do indeed have HPV, have never been treated for it, and have had precancerous pap smear results in the past, is it possible to still have it, after so long? And the other question I have, is: Could there be something wrong? I have what seems like a yeast infection every month, for a week before each of my cycles. Is this normal?! 

If you need more info, or have questions about any other symptoms, please post a reply.

Hollyv · Accepted Answer

Part of the post by the MD above is incorrect. It is true that low grade intraepithelial lesion does not mean cancer. It is true that in some cases it may go to a another level of precancer, which would be high grade. I'm not sure what the line means by the MD that says it will not resort to normal cells. If the poster means it will not go back to normal that is incorrect, it can. And it often does! It would be unusual to have 2 pregnancies and a number of Pap smears that were normal if you had dysplasia in your cervical cells. If I were you I would see an OB/Gyn and discuss this with her. A colposcopy and biopsy (which the above poster suggested) would not be the first direction I would go. I would have a Pap and you might want an HPV test. I don't really like the HPV test because it can produce false positive results but this is something that you should discuss with your Dr. unless your Dr. is doing HPV PCR testing which is accurate.
If you had a LEEP and the margins were clear then you have cleared (or removed) the HPV infection or precancerous cells. HPV clears a lot of the time on its own without treatment such as a LEEP. HPV is usually a transient infection that clears on its own. There is no reason to believe that you still have HPV.
Check out the yeast infection but there is no reason to believe they are related except that a yeast infection can cause a mildly abnormal Pap but it is related to the yeast infection and not HPV. Again most HPV infections clear on their own but it would seem that if you did have HPV that caused some abnormal cells that it was removed doing the LEEP procedure.
Good Luck

BKaurMD · Answer

Hello,
Having a low grade squamous intraepithelial lesion does not mean that cancer is present.The presence of low grade squamous intraepithelial lesions represents changes in cells that may occur before cancer is present. It may convert itself to high grade squamous intraepithelial lesion but will not resort to normal cells. Since your reports are old, you need to get a repeat cervical biopsy to confirm the progress of the disease.

It is very difficult to precisely confirm a diagnosis without examination and investigations and the answer is based on the medical information provided. For exact diagnosis, you are requested to consult your doctor. I sincerely hope that helps. Take care and please do keep me posted on how you are doing.

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