Women Getting Unneeded Ovarian Cancer Tests Out of Fear

Do so without knowing of their effectiveness

According to a recent survey, many women who had a Breast and Ovarian Cancer (BRCA) test and received uncertain results chose to have additional ovarian cancer screening and risk-reducing procedures. But these women opted for these interventions despite insufficient data to determine their effectiveness. The authors noted that women who are tested for BRCA mutations are generally left with difficult choices regardless of the test result. Those with uninformative results have to contend with "the lack of clear guidelines and the imprecise ability to predict the individual risk of ovarian cancer," the authors said. Among participants who received an inconclusive test result, 37.3 percent went on to undergo transvaginal ultrasonography; 33.8 percent said they had serum cancer antigen screening, and 12.3 percent subsequently underwent risk-reducing salpingo-oophorectomy. Among women in general, the lifetime risk of developing ovarian cancer is 1-to-2 percent, while women with harmful BRCA mutations have a cumulative lifetime risk of approximately 20-to-40 percent. (MedPage Today)

[SUBSCRIBE TO LOOP 21 RSS FEED]