Polar Bear Medical Blog

A recent study has led to the findings that ultrasounds are superior to symptoms at predicting ovarian cancer. This finding was published in the July 13th online issue of Cancer. However, while ultrasounds are better at predicting ovarian cancer, symptom analysis is better at distinguishing benign tumors.

Dr. Edward J. Pavlik, from the University of Kentucky, Lexington, and colleagues note. Exactly how symptom analysis stacks up against TVS was unclear. “Although ovarian cancer has been perceived as a ’silent killer’ that produces few specific symptoms, recent studies have indicated that certain symptoms are significantly more common in women with ovarian cancer than in women in the general population.”

The most interesting finding however, may be that although the ability to distinguish benign tumors is enhanced when both transvaginal sonography (TVS) and symptom analysis are combined, the detection of malignancy is actually worse.

The study analyzed 272 women to assess the performance of TVS and symptom analysis in the prediction of ovarian cancer. In the detection of ovarian cancer, TVS had a significantly greater sensitivity than symptom analysis, at 73.3% vs. 20%. However, in distinguishing benign tumors, the specificity of symptom analysis was greater than TVS at 91.3% vs. 74.4%.

The most remarkable statistic is how much the detection of ovarian cancer fell when both TVS and symptom analysis were combined; the detection fell to 16.7%. Yet, the specificity in distinguishing benign tumors rose a great deal to 97.9%!

This study could be the first step in discovering new, and more accurate ways to detect ovarian cancer earlier, and then possibly being able to treat it.

“Until an effective screening test for ovarian cancer is found, the clinical challenge remains how to discriminate between significant and common symptoms to best care for patients,” Dr. Ilana Cass, from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, comments in an accompanying editorial. “Given the vague nature of these symptoms that lack an exact threshold for further costly evaluation, this is no small task.”

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Tags: benign, cancer, malignant, medicine, ovarian cancer, symptom analysis, transvaginal sonography, tumors, TVS, ultrasounds, women

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 2:13 PM and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.