“en”:”Ovarian cancer is a disease which is relatively rare but unfortunately is usually diagnosed late in the course of the disease because we don’t have any way that we can easily detect it when it’s early stage. So from that standpoint women are very often diagnosed with ovarian cancer once it’s spread and that required aggressive surgery followed by chemotherapy to maximize their outcome. The CA125 blood test is a test which is present in about three quarters of women who have ovarian cancer. And we very commonly use this test to identify women’s response to chemotherapy where it may start in the high range and through treatment go down to a normal level. This test, however, has not been shown to be beneficial in identifying patients who don’t know they have ovarian cancer, so we can’t use this as a means by which we can detect the disease early in its stage.
Ovarian cancer’s a challenging disease because at this point in time there’s no current way to identify it at its early stages. While many women believe that a CA125 blood test may pick up the disease in the early stages that’s never been shown to be beneficial in the general population. So at this point in time it’s very important for women to rely upon symptoms that they may have, abdominal pain or bloating, changes with their bowel habits or urination.
And this may be a tip that there may be evidence of an early ovarian cancer and that should prompt a woman to bring these factors to the attention of her primary care provider or her medical team. So if a woman experienced abdominal pain or bloating it’s really important for her to reach out to her medical team to allow them to know this information so the testing can begin. If a physician, nurse practitioner, clinician believes that a woman may have ovarian cancer the next step would generally be a pelvic ultrasound, which is using sound waves to identify whether or not the ovaries appear abnormal. That may prompt referral to a gynecologic oncologist if there is a suspicion for ovarian cancer.. “
As found on Youtube
Symptoms, detection and treatment of ovarian cancer
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