Preventive Pap Smear Use among Women with Intellectual Disability, Autism, and Down Syndrome: Long-term Analysis and its Following Outpatient Visits

Preventive Pap Smear Use among Women with Intellectual Disability, Autism, and Down Syndrome: Long-term Analysis and its Following Outpatient Visits

Pap smear has become one of the most widely accepted screening procedures for cervical cancer. However, disabled women are less likely to receive these services. The present paper aims to analyze long-term Pap smear users and their subsequent outpatient care visits among women with intellectual disabilities (ID), autism, and Down syndrome, based on population-based data in Taiwan. A retrospective study was conducted using the National Health Insurance Research Dataset from the Taiwan National Health Insurance program. Those female insurers with ID, autism, and Down syndrome aged 30 years old and older were recruited for the analyses, and the study population comprised 9,077 to 20,296 subjects in the year 1997 to 2011. The results revealed that the over usage rate of Pap smear was 13.9% to 24.66% during the previous 15 years, and the usage trend was increasing gradually. Women in the age groups 40-50 and 50-60 years old were more likely to use the Pap smear test than other age groups. There was a higher usage rate of Pap smear test in women with Down syndrome than women with ID or autism. Women had ever used Pap smear tests were significantly more likely to use further outpatient checks in obstetrics and gynecology departments for ovary, uterus and cervix complications than their counterparts. This study highlights that the future health policy should monitor Pap smear provision and the following medication, to improve the quality of preventive care for women with disabilities.