The Bethesda System For Reporting Cervical Vaginal Cytologic Diagnoses

The Bethesda System was developed at a National Cancer Institute sponsored workshop in December 1988 to provide uniform diagnostic terminology that would facilitate communication between the laboratory and the clinician. The format of this report includes a descriptive diagnosis and an evaluation of specimen adequacy. A second workshop was held in April 1991 to evaluate the impact of The Bethesda System in actual practice and to amend and modify it where needed. One of the major recommendations of this second meeting was that precise criteria should be formulated for both the diagnostic terms and for the descriptors of specimen adequacy. That is the intended purpose of this report.