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(Ivanhoe Newswire) One of the great dangers of ovarian cancer is the absence of symptoms, making early diagnosis and treatment difficult. Researchers at the University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center--Markey Cancer Center reported that informative symptoms are absent in 80 percent of ovarian malignancies. They conducted a study that compared symptoms analysis to trans-vaginal ultrasound screening in predicting ovarian cancer.
For their study, the researchers selected 272 women participating in annual trans-vaginal screening from among 31,748 women who were enrolled in a free screening project at the university. When they compared symptom results to ultrasound and surgical pathology findings, they found ultrasound screening performed nearly four times better than symptoms analysis for detecting ovarian malignancies.
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While symptoms analysis performed significantly better for distinguishing benign tumors, combining symptom analysis with trans-vaginal screening actually resulted in poorer identification of malignancy, even as it improved the ability to distinguish benign tumors to almost 98 percent.
Edward J. Plavik, Ph.D., lead author of the study, told Ivanhoe that while ignoring symptoms is not an option, trans-vaginal ultrasound screening is much more effective in the early detection and treatment of the vast majority of ovarian cancer cases.
SOURCE: Cancer, July 13, 2009
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