Ovarian Cancer: The Silent Killer

Will symptom awareness lead to earlier detection and better outcomes, in ovarian cancer?

If ovarian cancer is diagnosed early, it can be treated successfully with surgery, although it’s a major operation: The ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus, and omentum, a fatty layer of tissue that covers the intestines, are removed. More often, though, it is diagnosed at a later stage – and the survival statistics are grim.

Tumors are occasionally detected during a routine pelvic exam, but the ovaries are anatomically ‘deep,’ so early-stage cancers are rarely found.

Ovarian cancer does produce a protein called CA125 that can be measured in the blood. But in pre-menopausal women, many non-cancerous conditions, like endometriosis, can elevate those levels. Studies in postmenopausal women have also indicated that there would be an unacceptably high number of false positives. Research has shown that CA-125 testing would miss cancers, too.

Another possibility for early detection is transvaginal ultrasound, which involves getting an image of the ovaries with an ultrasound device inserted into the vagina. But a large study found that it took 5,200 ultrasounds to find just one case of ovarian cancer, a result that made screening women with transvaginal ultrasound seem impractical.

So there’s a big void. Researchers, however, tried to fill it with a consensus statement about ovarian cancer symptoms.

THE SILENT KILLER SPEAKS