ovarianearlydetection.info | Ovarian Cancer Early Detection Information

Ovarian Cancer Facts

In the United States, an average of one woman is diagnosed with ovarian cancer every 20 minutes. Each day, an American woman dies every 36 minutes as a result of this disease. Extrapolated to a world population basis, that projects to one ovarian cancer death somewhere on earth about every two to four minutes.

When detected early, and treated early, chances of long-term survival and even a complete cure are very promising. Unfortunately, for various reasons, ovarian tumors are often not discovered until they have progressed to an advanced stage where treatment must become very aggressive and expensive and when chances for survival are greatly reduced.

The significance of the five-year survival period is that about 90% of recurrences will occur within five years after completion of treatment, and only about 10% will recur after the five-year period has elapsed.

What are some of the reasons that early detection has been failing?

Women are not well informed about the disease.
Because ovarian cancer is so difficult to properly diagnose, a significant number of doctors are not adequately trained to recognize the symptoms.
A large population of women and doctors have been erroneously persuaded to believe the myth that ovarian cancer exhibits no symptoms during its early stages of development. This attitude encourages discounting the possibility that the symptoms may represent ovarian cancer, and instead misleads the patients and the doctors to squander critical treatment time looking elsewhere for the meaning of the symptoms.
Diagnoses of symptoms are being treated too casually and are often being delayed months and even years — time in which certain types of tumors may be progressing very rapidly to life-threatening stages.
Women failing to take the initiative in insisting on finding out what is wrong when they are not feeling well.
Adequate procedures for positive screening are as yet still not well developed or utilized.

We suggest that potential ovarian cancer victims must take personal responsibility in determining what their symptoms mean when they are not feeling well, and that they should insist upon getting positive and confirmed diagnosis of symptoms no matter how mild they may be. While their primary physicians are important for guidance, if they feel that the answers they are getting do not make good sense, then they should insist on getting additional medical diagnoses and opinions until their symptoms are logically explained and the causes positively identified. If in doubt, they should be referred to a Gynecologic Oncologist — a specialist in gynecologic cancers.

The symptoms may not turn out to be caused by ovarian cancer, but that does not justify ignoring them. It does not justify not finding out exactly what the symptoms do mean and how they might impact a person's well-being.

So what are the symptoms that might indicate trouble? Studies (Goff, Smith) have shown that symptoms are present in about 90% of developing ovarian tumors, even in the early stages. Unfortunately, there are still a relatively small percentage of patients who may not experience symptoms until the disease has advanced to a lethal condition. See our Symptoms page for a list of possible symptoms of ovarian cancer.