Portable Pocket colposcopy performs comparably to standard-of-care clinical colposcopy using acetic acid and Lugol's iodine as contrast mediators: an investigational study in Peru

Objective: Our goal was to develop a tele-colposcopy platform for primary-care clinics to improve screening sensitivity and access. Specifically, we developed a low-cost, portable Pocket colposcope and evaluated its performance in a tertiary healthcare centre in Peru.

Design and setting: Images of the cervix were captured with a standard-of-care and Pocket colposcope at la Liga Contra el Cáncer in Lima, Peru.

Population: Two hundred Peruvian women with abnormal cytology and/or human papillomavirus positivity were enrolled.

Methods: Images were collected using acetic acid and Lugol's iodine as contrast agents. Biopsies were taken as per standard-of-care procedures.

Main outcome measures: After passing quality review, images from 129 women were sent to four physicians who provided a diagnosis for each image.

Results: Physician interpretation of images from the two colposcopes agreed 83.1% of the time. The average sensitivity and specificity of physician interpretation compared with pathology was similar for the Pocket (sensitivity = 71.2%, specificity = 57.5%) and standard-of-care (sensitivity = 79.8%, specificity = 56.6%) colposcopes. When compared with a previous study where only acetic acid was applied to the cervix, results indicated that adding Lugol's iodine as a secondary contrast agent improved the percent agreement between colposcopes for all pathological categories by up to 8.9% and the sensitivity and specificity of physician interpretation compared with pathology by over 6.0 and 9.0%, respectively.

Conclusions: The Pocket colposcope performance was similar to that of a standard-of-care colposcope when used to identify precancerous and cancerous lesions using acetic acid and Lugol's iodine during colposcopy examinations in Peru.

Tweetable abstract: The Pocket colposcope performance was similar to that of a standard-of-care colposcope when identifying cervical lesions.