MODEL RELEASED. Cervical smear test. Clinician transferring cells from a scraper to a vial of preservative solution. This equipment is used for the ThinPrep Pap (Papanicolaou) test for detecting abnormalities in cells of the uterine cervix. This mode of collection was approved in 1996 and is an improvement on the former system because cells from the sample are held in suspension until analysis and therefore can be spread more thinly on a slide for observation. This should improve the detection rate of abnormalities, such as cervical cancer, and decrease the incidence of false diagnoses. Cervical cancer is almost 100% curable when detected early.