Staging of Cervical Cancer

Normal cervical cells may undergo gradual changes to become precancerous and then cancerous - a process which may take several years. The term dysplasia had been used since the 1950s to describe abnormal cells and was further classified as mild, moderate or severe. The newer term that is currently used is cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) which is classified according to the degree of cell abnormality (1, 2, or 3, which corresponds to the previous mild, moderate or severe dysplasia classification). Low-grade CIN indicates a minimal change in the cells and high-grade CIN indicates a greater degree of abnormality.