Aaron Hartman, MDFunctional Medicine Specialist | Clinical Researcher

Girls Were Getting Pap Smears at 15 — The Guidelines Changed, Then Took a Decade to Reach Pa #shorts

16 Jun 2026 · 2 min

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1:32

In this short monologue, Dr. Aaron Hartman explains how pap smear recommendations for women shifted from screening adolescents as young as 15 to beginning at age 21 and extending follow‑up intervals to 3–5 years after a normal result, based on evidence that most abnormalities are caused by HPV. He recounts that, despite the 2006‑2007 evidence, his own community in Richmond did not adopt the new guidelines for almost ten years, illustrating a broader pattern of delayed implementation in medicine. He uses the pap smear story as a case study of “blind spots” in the healthcare system—areas where long‑standing practices persist despite contrary evidence, citing antibiotics, breast‑cancer screening, and hormone‑replacement therapy as other examples. He ends by asking viewers to consider what current misconceptions might still be influencing care.

Chapters

Women no longer need pap smears. Did you know that? Until they're 21. When I first started my training, we were giving pap smears to women when they're 15, 16, way too young, early. And one of the results was abnormal pap smears resulted in surgical procedures that young ladies didn't need that sometimes could result in infertility. Back in 2006, 2007, new information came out that we could actually, it was caused by virus. And if we've checked for that and the pap was normal, you could actually wait 3 to 5 years to do a follow-up. And you didn't have to do the first pap until the young lady was 21. The question I have for you is, how long did it take for people to adopt that information in practice? It was almost a decade. I learned that when I was in the military back in 2006, came back to civilian life in 2007. And guess what? When I moved back up here to Richmond, no one was doing that. It was like pulling teeth. You talk to a female, hey, you don't need a Pap, you know, you, you've had 3 normal ones, you never had, you're not high risk. Let's wait 3 to 5 years. It took almost a decade for something as basic as changing Pap smear recommendations to change. In our, in, in our local community. This happens all the time. So these, these are blind spots. These are things in our healthcare system that we thought were right that are just plain wrong. They take a long time to adopt. It happens all the time. Whether antibiotics, whether breast cancer screening, whether hormone replacement therapy, the pap smear story is just one of many. The reason I'm going over all these is if you've watched enough of these, you've heard something you remember. This happens all the time in our healthcare system. So my question to you today is this, what are the blind spots in our healthcare system now that we're missing? Things that we think that they're right. Right. Right now that are just plain wrong. There's a few, and we'll talk about those later.