Originally published August 30 2005
Doctors' delay in diagnosing ovarian cancer can be deadly
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Early diagnosis of ovarian cancer is critical for increasing the chances of survival, but many patients don't receive proper testing because doctors don’t order the correct tests in time.
A critical early diagnosis of ovarian cancer may be delayed by four months or more in some women because doctors don't order the proper tests soon enough, researchers here reported.
Instead, these women first received abdominal imaging or diagnostic gastrointestinal tests, which are less likely to establish the correct diagnosis, Dr. Smith and colleagues reported online today in the journal Cancer.
A delayed diagnosis of ovarian cancer is important because the disease can progress from early to advanced disease in as little as a year, the researchers said.
While acknowledging that symptoms such as abdominal pain and swelling are not specific for ovarian cancer, the researchers urged physicians to consider ovarian cancer in the differential diagnosis of women who present with these unexplained symptoms.
The researchers examined Medicare diagnosis codes and claims for diagnostic procedure for nearly 2,000 women ages 68 or older who were diagnosed with ovarian cancer from 1994 to 1999.
The researchers compared these records with those of two control groups who received medical care during the same time period.
The first was about 6,000 elderly women diagnosed with localized breast cancer, and the second was more than 10,000 age-matched, cancer-free controls.
At 12 months before diagnosis, women with ovarian cancer were more than twice as likely to have abdominal swelling (95% CI 1.21-4.65) or pelvic pain (95% CI 1.18-3.71) as the breast cancer control patients.
Women with ovarian cancer were also significantly more likely to have target symptoms at a variety of time points before their diagnosis than the cancer-free control group.
Overall, 40% of women with ovarian cancer visited their doctor at least once because of abdominal or pelvic symptoms between 36 and four months before their cancer was diagnosed.
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