British Researchers Find Seven Symptoms That Shout Rather Than Whisper Ovarian Cancer

Seven symptoms connected with ovarian cancer emphasize the blatant nature of a cancer that has been described as the “silent disease” due to its late diagnosis, an article and editorial in the Aug. 25, 2009, British Medical Journal, stressed.

Historically, ovarian cancer has been called the silent killer because it was considered to have few symptoms and carries the worst prognosis of all gynecologic cancers, noted authors William Hamilton, Tim J. Peters, Clare Bankhead and Deborah Sharp in “Risk of Ovarian Cancer in Women With Symptoms in Primary Care: Population Based Case-control Study.” The study and accompanying editorial on diagnosing ovarian cancer was published online at www.bmj.com with free access.

To determine if this held true, the researchers conducted a case control study that covered 39 practices in Devon, England, 212 women age 40 and older with an ovarian cancer diagnosis and 1,060 healthy controls matched by age and general practice. They discovered seven symptoms reported to primary care physicians that were “independently associated with ovarian cancer.” One symptom, abdominal distension, had a positive predictive value of 2.5, with the rest less likely to indicate the carcinoma. The six additional symptoms associated with an ovarian cancer diagnosis are postmenopausal bleeding, loss of appetite, increased urinary frequency, abdominal pain, rectal bleeding and abdominal bloating, which differs from distention.

Women with ovarian cancer often report these symptoms to primary care physicians, sometimes months before a diagnosis, the authors concluded.

“Symptoms are common and often reported, even in early, and potentially curable, cancers,” the authors stated. “…Ovarian cancer is not silent, rather its sound is going unheard.”