Table 2Recommendation and good practice statement for treatment not covered in previous guidelines

For both the general population and women living with HIV Strength of recommendation and certainty of evidence

41. Once a decision to treat a woman is made – whether from the general population of women or women living with HIV – it is good practice to treat as soon as possible within six months to reduce the risk of loss to follow-up. However, in women who are pregnant, good practice includes deferral until after pregnancy.

In circumstances when treatment is not provided within this time frame, it is good practice to re-evaluate the woman before treatment.

Good practice statement

42. WHO suggests large-loop excision of the transformation zone (LLETZ) or cold knife conization (CKC) for women from the general population and women living with HIV who have histologically confirmed adenocarcinoma in situ (AIS).

Remarks: Loop excision may be preferred in women of reproductive age, in settings with greater availability of LLETZ and by providers with greater expertise performing LLETZ. CKC may be preferred when interpretation of the margins of the histological specimen is imperative.

Conditional recommendation, low-certainty evidence

From: Executive summary

Cover of WHO guideline for screening and treatment of cervical pre-cancer lesions for cervical cancer prevention
WHO guideline for screening and treatment of cervical pre-cancer lesions for cervical cancer prevention [Internet]. 2nd edition.
© World Health Organization 2021.

Sales, rights and licensing. To purchase WHO publications, see http://apps.who.int/bookorders. To submit requests for commercial use and queries on rights and licensing, see http://www.who.int/about/licensing.

Third-party materials. If you wish to reuse material from this work that is attributed to a third party, such as tables, figures or images, it is your responsibility to determine whether permission is needed for that reuse and to obtain permission from the copyright holder. The risk of claims resulting from infringement of any third-party-owned component in the work rests solely with the user.

Some rights reserved. This work is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO licence (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/igo).

Under the terms of this licence, you may copy, redistribute and adapt the work for non-commercial purposes, provided the work is appropriately cited, as indicated below. In any use of this work, there should be no suggestion that WHO endorses any specific organization, products or services. The use of the WHO logo is not permitted. If you adapt the work, then you must license your work under the same or equivalent Creative Commons licence. If you create a translation of this work, you should add the following disclaimer along with the suggested citation: “This translation was not created by the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO is not responsible for the content or accuracy of this translation. The original English edition shall be the binding and authentic edition”.

Any mediation relating to disputes arising under the licence shall be conducted in accordance with the mediation rules of the World Intellectual Property Organization (http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/mediation/rules/).

NCBI Bookshelf. A service of the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health.