The Scientific Basis for Detecting Early Stage Epithelial Ovarian Carcinoma

摘要

In the United States ovarian carcinoma is the leading cause of death from gynecologic malignancies and is the fifth most common female cancer. The incidence of ovarian cancer has been steadily increasing over the past 10 years (overall lifetime risk 1.8%), with the mean age of occurrence at 60 years.1 Annually approximately 23,300 women will be newly diagnosed with ovarian cancer and 13,900 will die from this disease.' Despite significant improvement in surgical technology, critical care, and new chemotherapeutic regimens, the overall 5-year survival for women with stage III/IV epithelial ovarian carcinoma has remained constant (12%) over the past 30 years. However, those women opportune enough to be diagnosed with disease confined to the ovary (stage IA-IB) often require less morbid surgical intervention, may not require adjuvant chemotherapy, and most importantly have an overall 5-year survival approximating 90%.2 Therefore, short of an effective ovarian cancer specific therapy, the early detection of early stage epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is essential in decreasing the morbidity and mortality associated with the disease.