The Bethesda system (TBS), officially called The Bethesda System for Reporting Cervical Cytology, is a system for reporting cervical or vaginal cytologic diagnoses,[1] used for reporting Pap smear results. It was introduced in 1988[2] and revised in 1991,[3] 2001,[1][4][5] and 2014.[6] The name comes from the location (Bethesda, Maryland) of the conference, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, that established the system.
Since 2010, there is also a Bethesda system used for cytopathology of thyroid nodules, which is called The Bethesda System for Reporting Thyroid Cytopathology (TBSRTC or BSRTC). Like TBS, it was the result of a conference sponsored by the NIH and is published in book editions (currently by Springer). Mentions of "the Bethesda system" without further specification usually refer to the cervical system, unless the thyroid context of a discussion is implicit.
^Soloman, Diane (1989). "The 1988 Bethesda System for reporting cerval/vaginal cytologic diagnoses: developed and approved at the National Cancer Institute workshop in Bethesda, MD, December 12–13, 1988". Diagn. Cytopathol. 5 (3): 331–4. doi:10.1002/dc.2840050318. PMID2791840. S2CID19684695.
^Broder S (1992). "The Bethesda System for Reporting Cervical/Vaginal Cytologic Diagnoses—Report of the 1991 Bethesda Workshop". JAMA. 267 (14): 1892. doi:10.1001/jama.1992.03480140014005.
^Nayar R, Solomon D. Second edition of 'The Bethesda System for reporting cervical cytology' – Atlas, website, and Bethesda interobserver reproducibility project. CytoJournal [serial online] 2004 [cited 2011 Apr 17];1:4. Available from: http://www.cytojournal.com/text.asp?2004/1/1/4/41272Archived 2018-10-02 at the Wayback Machine