Abstract

Between January and December 1989, 608 colposcopies were performed under the waiting list initiative at St Mary's Hospital in Manchester on patients seen for the first time after an abnormal cervical smear. Following colposcopy, 100 of these patients were subjected to cone biopsies for the management of cervical intra-epithelial neoplasia (CIN). The negative cone biopsy rate was 9%. The authors outline the reasons for its occurrence following a review of all the histologic and cytologic material for this group. The main reason for the negative cone biopsies in this series was the disappearance of the abnormal epithelium, presumably due to fortuitous complete excision or regression of the lesion following colposcopic punch biopsy.