First remember that a finding of atypical cells is NOT cancer. Cells become damaged for many reasons, and the progression of that damage from normal to malignant is a cascade of cellular events, each one making the cell more "atypical" for the type it is (as in a squamous cell). So a woman who gets an abnormal PAP smear, (a brush collection of surface squamous cells) has cells in it that are somewhere on a line from normal to malignant, or you could say from totally normal to the height of abnormal. The midway point between the two is dysplasia.

There are lots of degrees of the stages between the beginning the middle and the end transformation. Some of the early atypical characteristics NEVER move to dysplastic cells, and even when they do, only 25% of all dysplastic cells untreated ever continue on the path to malignancy. (This is the difference between high grade and low grade dysplasia.)

Now the important part. A biopsy that is not full of malignant, fully transformed cells, is a picture of cells variously atypical, at THAT MOMENT IN TIME, somewhere on the line between normal and malignant. A woman goes back to the GYN after an atypical PAP smear in about 3-6 months to do it again. The important questions are; has it resolved on its own? (very common), has the progression continued but still not become high grade dysplasia? or is it now a dangerous high grade dysplasia which needs to be removed before it can progress to full malignancy? Even at the malignancy point, something found extremely early, (a carcinoma in situ) can often be completely removed without leaving malignant cells behind because it is so small and early.

This is the beauty of early detection. There are multiple points on a path, that you can discover (the time in the sequence of transformation, or earliest staging of full blown disease, is the most important part of the whole process, and has the greatest impact on long-term end results) and multiple decision making points in whether to watch it or remove it can be made, or perhaps even see your own body's immune mechanisms make it disappear over several months of monitoring. The trick is regular intervals of monitoring/biopsy and comparison to previous biopsies to see a trend, and then act accordingly.

It is never one day I'm a healthy normal cell, and the next day I am a malignant gone to the dark side cell.