Most general practitioners will see a woman with undiagnosed ovarian cancer only once every few years, making it an unlikely consideration in their diagnostic thinking. In the majority of women with ovarian cancer, by the time the diagnosis is made, the cancer is at a late stage: in these women, the 5 year survival rate is less than 30 percent.1
Up until now, current testing methods such as ultrasounds or blood tests (in which we measure two proteins, CA125 and HE4) have not been shown to effectively diagnose ovarian cancer in its early stages. Therefore, screening of healthy women for ovarian cancer by these methods has not been endorsed in medical guidelines.
A new approach to better assess the risk of epithelial ovarian cancer in women with a pelvic mass uses the combination of CA 125 and HE4 in a mathematical algorithm along with the menopausal status of the woman. the dual marker combination can be used to classify women into high and low risk groups, allowing for effetive triage of women to appropriate sugical centers for care. The Risk of Ovarian Maliganacy Algorithm has been shown to increase the sensitivity and specificity for ovarian cancer detection compared to testing with CA 125 alone.