Diagnosis of ovarian cancer in primary care

doi:10.1136/bmj.b3286

Published 25 August 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b3286
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b3286

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Diagnosis of ovarian cancer in primary care

Persistent abdominal distension carries the highest predictivevalue

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Worldwide, more than 200 000 new cases of ovarian cancer occureach year, and these account for around 4% of all cancers diagnosedin women.¹ Overall the five year survival rate from ovariancancer is poor at around 30-40%. For women diagnosed with earlystage disease, the five year survival rate is over 70%, butonly a fifth of cases are diagnosed early.² For women with latestage disease, the five year survival rate is around 15%. Noeffective screening test is available.

Earlier identification of symptoms could improve prognosis,³⁴ and in the linked case control study (doi:10.1136/bmj.b2998),Hamilton and colleagues report the predictive value of symptomsin diagnosing ovarian cancer in primary care.⁵

The late stage of presentation has been blamed on the insidiousnature of the disease, which has vague non-specific symptoms.Historically, ovarian cancer has been referred to as the "silentkiller" because it was . . . [Full text of this article]

Joan Austoker, director

¹ Cancer Research UK Primary Care Education Research Group, Cancer Epidemiology Unit, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7DL

joan.austoker@ceu.ox.ac.uk

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Risk of ovarian cancer in women with symptoms in primary care: population based case-control study: William Hamilton, Tim J Peters, Clare Bankhead, and Deborah Sharp
BMJ 2009 339: b2998. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]