Ultrasound Performs Better Than Symptoms Analysis In Detecting Ovarian Cancer

A new study conducted by doctors suggests that ultrasound outperforms symptom analysis when it comes to detecting ovarian cancer among women.

The researchers at the University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center-Markey Cancer Center selected 272 women participating in annual trans-vaginal screening (TVS) from 31,748 women enrolled in a free screening project at the university, and compared symptom results to ultrasound and surgical pathology findings.

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The team observed that TVS performed better than symptoms analysis for detecting malignancies-73.3 per cent versus 20 per cent sensitivity.

While symptoms analysis performed better for distinguishing benign tumors (91.3% versus 74.4% specificity), adding symptom analysis to TVS actually resulted in poorer identification of malignancy (sensitivity = 16.7%), even as it improved the ability to distinguish benign tumors (specificity = 97.9%).

The researchers say that their observations suggest that even though symptoms do identify ovarian malignancies, they are not as accurate as TVS.

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They add that informative symptoms can be expected to be absent in 80 per cent of ovarian malignancies.

A research article describing the study has been published in the online edition of the journal CANCER.

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Source-ANI
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