Table 4. Advantages and disadvantages of CS and LBC techniques.

	Conventional Smear (CS)	LBC (Filtration)	LBC (Precipitation)
Advantages	Better gauge of cellularity	No ROSE needed	No ROSE needed
	Preserved extracellular material	Single slide	Single slide
	Preserved cytologic architecture	Flatter cell distribution	Improved satisfactory rate
	Stain options
Disadvantages	Requires ROSE	Increased unsatisfactory rate	More cell crowding/overlap
	More slides to evaluate	Loss of cellularity gauge, extracellular material, cytologic architecture, and stain options	Loss of cellularity gauge, extracellular material, cytologic architecture, and stain options

CS, conventional smear; LBC, liquid-based cytology; ROSE, rapid on-site evaluation.