Ovarian Cancer Is Not Silent – Symptoms Warn

A symptom questionnaire accompanied with a complete blood examination boosts chances of early detection of ovarian cancerdefine by almost 80 percent, researchers of a new study report.

Often called a "silent killer" because the symptoms are mild until in advanced stage, ovarian cancerdefine also has recent-onset symptoms like abdominal bloatingdefine

, pelvic or abdominal paindefine

, difficulty eating or feeling full quickly and urinary symptoms like frequent urge to urinate, survivors of ovarian cancer claim.

While a "symptom index" designed by the research team led by Goff, M. Robyn Andersen, of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center could catch only 57 percent of early-stage ovarian cancers in a 2007 study, the team now claims that accompanying the “symptom index” with a blood test for the CA125 ovarian-cancer biomarker, a protein that is often elevated in ovarian cancer, can amplify the early detection rates to almost 80 percent.

For the study, the researchers enrolled 254 healthy women at high-risk for ovarian cancer primarily due to family history. Another 75 women who were about to undergo surgery to remove an ovarian cancer also participated in the study.

Besides filling in a questionnaire about their symptoms, all participants were required to undergo a blood test checking out the CA125 levels.
Put together, the two methods correctly identified almost 90 percent of the ovarian cancers -- 80.6 percent of the early cancers and 95.1 percent of the later-stage cancers, researchers marked.

However, almost 14 percent of women who reportedly experienced symptoms and also measured high on CA 125 levels did not have ovarian cancer, Andersen reported stating that CA 125 can sometimes be elevated in women who don't have ovarian cancer

Ovarian cancer:

Ovarian cancer a malignant tumordefine arising from an ovary, is the fifth leading cause of cancer deaths in women, worldwide.

As the symptoms of ovarian cancer are often silent and rarely specific, they seem to be gastrointestinal or psychological rather than gynecological in nature, thus leading to misdiagnoses or missed-diagnosis.

Out of over 21,000 women diagnosed with ovarian cancer annually, nearly 15,000 women die from the disease each year, official figures of the American Cancer Society (ACS) report. Merely 20 percent of the diagnoses are made in the early stage of the disease.

Though the exact cause of ovarian cancer is unknown, the risk of developing ovarian cancer appears to be affected by several factors. Numbers of children, early age of first pregnancy, low use of hormonal contraceptives are known to lower the chances of developing ovarian cancer. Moreover, older women are at highest risk of developing the malignancy. Family history also plays a vital role.