Women can wait until 21 to do their first Pap test

The American College of Obstetrics and Gynaecologists recommended the change after concluding that more frequent testing did not catch significantly more cancers and often resulted in girls and young women experiencing unnecessary stress, anxiety and sometimes harmful treatments because of suspicious growths that would not cause problems.

"We really felt that the downsides of more frequent screening outweighed any benefits" said Alan Waxman, a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of New Mexico who led the revision of the guidelines. "More testing is not always more intelligent testing."

The change comes amid sharp controversy over new recommendations from a federal task force that women wait until age 50 before they begin having routine mammograms and that women age 50 to 74 scale back to getting the exams routinely every two years.

Officials said the release of two sets of guidelines in the same week was coincidental, but the new cervical cancer recommendations could fuel the fire over mammograms, an issue that has become embroiled in the debate over health care reform. The Obama administration distanced itself from the breast exam guidelines announced on Monday by a federal task force, saying the panel does not set government policy or determine what services are covered by the government.

White House aides said the team leading the fight to pass health-care reform first heard about the upcoming report — which the panel approved in March — in the past two weeks, and viewed it as one of many potential headaches that opponents could use to attack the reform efforts, one official said.

— Los Angeles Times- Washington Post News Service