Ovarian Cancer: A Rare Disease with Few Symptoms
Ovarian cancer forms in the tissues of the ovary with little to no symptoms. The cure rate for ovarian cancer is highest in its early stages. A gynecologic oncologist can offer a more complete assessment of treatment possibilities for ovarian cancer patient. Charles Landen, MD, and Susan Modesitt, MD, discuss the ovarian cancer treatments and experience offered at UVA.
Learn more at https://uvahealth.com/services..../gynecological-cance
CHARLES LANDEN: Ovarian cancer is a relatively rare disease. Any one patientโs lifetime risk is about 1.7%. There are certain families that pass on a gene that increases their risk of developing ovarian cancer. The most common is BRCA, which also puts patients at higher risk of breast cancer. Ovarian cancer itself usually does not give symptoms that are obvious in the earliest stages. The most common symptoms associated with ovarian cancer are a decreased appetite, bloating, persistent heartburn, pressure in the pelvis that might give some urinary complaints, that might give some general discomfort or pain. Unfortunately, all these symptoms are very non-specific.
SUSAN MODESITT: For ovarian cancer, we do know that it's very important that women are treated by gynecologic oncologists because it's different than what maybe a general surgeon would do or a general OB-GYN and so if they need radical surgery, and that includes you know a hysterectomy or removal of the ovaries but also sometimes includes removing the spleen, the omentum, the diaphragm, doing lymph node sampling doing bowel surgery. So we do everything in the abdomen that needs to be done.
CHARLES LANDEN: For patients who are diagnosed in stage 1 or stage 2, cure rates are pretty high with surgery, and usually chemotherapy. For patients who are diagnosed in stage 3 or 4, they also require surgery and chemotherapy. Whether we do surgery first or chemotherapy first might depend on where the disease is and what the patient's overall health is but generally it's a combination of surgery and chemotherapy. That chemotherapy journey is usually on the order of about five months. It's usually outpatient chemotherapy to where a patient comes in has labs checked, meets with a physician to talk about how they're doing and if their labs are OK, get chemotherapy over the course of about four or five hours and are able to go home that same day.
SUSAN MODESITT: It's really overwhelming to get a cancer diagnosis, and so, you know as soon as I say you may have cancer or you have cancer, people really have a hard time remembering anything else I say at that moment. So we make sure we give people a lot of written information. I ask everyone to keep a notebook and write things down as they get them so that when the next time we talk either on the phone or in person that they can go through what they want. It's really important to get to know the patient their whole family so that you can tailor the treatments that most impact them.
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