Review calls for cervical cancer screening age to be extended past 65

Older women don't get screened as often as they should for cervical cancer, according to a review that was released on Monday, the start of Cervical Screening Awareness Week in the UK.

Women over the age of 50 are not getting screened as frequently as they should, hinting at skewed perceptions that cervical cancer is a younger women's disease, according to the review.

The review, which calls for the age of cervical screening to be extended past 65, was published Monday in the British Medical Journal.

Lead author Dr. Sue Sherman of Keele University in the UK concluded that 20 percent of the 3,121 new cases diagnosed annually involve women over 65 years old and 50 percent of deaths as a result of cervical cancer occur within the same age bracket.

Current guidelines that say women don't need screenings after age 65 feed the misperception that the disease is no longer a problem at that age, according to the review.