Valley of Life | Online Memorial Blog

Every year, almost 25,000 American women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Of those women, 4 in 5 find that the cancer has spread beyond their ovaries, making surviving the disease nearly impossible. It is no wonder that women fear this disease so much in our society. There is some hope though. If ovarian cancer is caught before it is spread, 90% of women will live longer than 5 years. Unfortunately right now good testing is hard to come by. Research is being done but at a rate too slow to save many women. So how can you, your sister, or your mother help detect this cancer? Follow these detection tips from key researchers and doctors from the country’s leading cancer institutes collected by Health Magazine.

Identify Symptoms
The American Cancer Society has some basic known symptoms identified that women should look out for. See blog post “Symptoms of Ovarian Cancer” for more on how to notice ovarian cancer symptoms.

Know Your Family History
Knowing the medical histories of your female relatives on both sides of your family will help you and your doctor or a geneticist recognize potential health dangers early. See blog post “Creating A Family Medical Tree” for more on learning about family health history.

Begin Testing
Though early testing have not yet shown to significantly reduce the number of deaths due to ovarian cancer, they are still our current best chance at early detection. See blog post “Ovarian Cancer Testing | What You Should Know” for more on testing.

Read Up
Scientists are working hard to improve on the detection and screening tests currently being used. A major testing trial with over 200,000 women participating is currently being conducted and results are expected in 2010. Improved blood tests and better ideas about what can be seen and understood from ultrasounds are all being worked on now. Work with your doctor to understand where research is going and see if you can get involved.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 23rd, 2007 at 9:28 am and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.