Ovarian Cancer Study

Progress within the medical sciences is often incremental, and sometimes it really is a case of one step forward and two steps backwards.  

Ovarian cancer kills approximately 13770 women annually in the United States, 4000 women in the UK and 1590 women in Canada.  Ovarian cancer is typically not diagnosed until it is in the late stage of development and thus harder to treat.  It would be intuitive that early and frequent screening for ovarian cancer would help with diagnosing the cancer sooner, thus leading to more lives saved.

Sadly this new study from the UK, which took place over 16 years, found that screening did not in fact significantly reduce ovarian cancer deaths, and thus it recommends against general population screening of ovarian cancer.

Cheers, 

Colin