For women getting tested for cervical cancer in New Mexico, it seems to be a case of too much or too little.

A study performed by the University of New Mexico (UNM Albuquerque) has found that many women in the state are getting tested too many times over five-year intervals, while others are going too long without testing.

“We not only show the overuse of cervical cancer screening, but we also show that more and more women are not coming back for more than five years,” Cosette Wheeler, professor in the UNM Department of Pathology and the director of the Center for HPV (cervical cancer) Protection at the Comprehensive Cancer Center said in the press release. “Alarmingly, as recommendations for intervals between cervical screening have become longer and therefore less frequent, more women are falling out of screening within reasonable and recommended intervals.”

Wheeler said some women are putting off testing for more than five years, which is too long to insure protection after a prior screening.

Doctors recommend women aged 30 to 64 undergo a test every five years, or three years for a cytology (pap smear cell) study alone.

The UNM Newsroom website said getting tested too often can cause its own problems from unnecessary procedures, while not getting tested enough puts women at higher cancer risk.

The report said 65% of New Mexico women in the target age group were screened in 2019 with a normal prior test and had undergone a re-screen test within three years, more than recommended.

On the other side, 6.5% of women with a negative co-test and 14.9% with the pap smear test alone were not tested again in some cases for up to seven years.

“The negative cytology (pap smear) alone does not provide the same assurance that a negative co-test does for having a low risk of cervical cancer,” the UNM website stated.

A report from the Journal of the National Cancer Institute called the period some women are putting off getting tested “alarming.”

In 2019 the report said only 13% of women aged 30-64 underwent co-testing at the recommended five-year interval, while 28% did the cytology pap smear screening at the recommended three-year interval.

“Although overscreening is declining, many women are still undergoing cervical cancer screening too frequently, especially by co-testing, thereby increasing its harms and costs,” the Cancer Institute report stated. “Meanwhile, an increasing number of women are undergoing cervical cancer screening too infrequently, which, as a consequence, may reduce its health benefits.”