Diagnosing Ovarian Cancer by Various Scans and Tests

It is a very easy way to visualize the ovaries and tubes, and probably - I will say the most accurate way is the vaginal probe, which is something over the last 20 years. It's painless, but it gives a much better resolution, and it gives you very quick answers, especially about the backside of the uterus. Depending if the ultrasound is very definitive, it's an inexpensive, quick test, but a second test might be a CAT Scan. I'm sure again almost everybody knows what a CAT Scan is. It's a series of x-rays and image - it's an imaging device that can show cystic, solid, semi-solid images, a little bit more accurate than ultrasound.



And of course there's a variety of other tests that can be drawn, there's certain blood tests. And I don't want to scare people. There are certain cancer indicating markers called a CA125. This is something, it's a type of a test - the CA125 is a cancer marker. However, it's not very accurate, and there's a lot of other conditions that can cause an elevated CA125. In fact I had a woman once say well but my doctor did a cancer test, and obviously it was a CA125, but she had absolutely nothing wrong, and then she was worried maybe there was something missed. But there are so many conditions that are beyond the scope of this discussion, I will just say that that's not a very accurate test and probably should be reserved for women who are more in the cancer risk age group, which we'll get into in a minute.



So you've got the imaging tests. You've got the CA125. New York OB/GYN Christopher Freville describes other tests, but basically some rare tumors quite frankly can cause symptoms of pregnancy, they can cause an elevated pregnancy test, there's a whole gamut of tests that can be used. But these are not very, very specific. It's more or less what's felt, what's seen.



And that leads us into when we find something, what do we do about it? And I think yeah, you have to say well okay, we found something. And this is a function of three things. First of all, the most important, I think, is probably the woman's age, and the - let's divide these into three categories. You can have before you have periods, pre-menopausal or pre-pubital, pre-menarchal, before periods - so you've got children. Another group, of course, is the childbearing years, anywhere from 13 to probably 50, and the last category is post-menopausal. Let's just say beyond 50.



So that's one criteria. Another criteria would be the size of the ovarian cyst and how it looks on the ultrasound. And then the third criteria is certainly the symptoms.



And let's run through those real quick. As far as the age, why is that important? Well, again, if we're just sticking here with even tumors. Let's stick with cysts. Almost all tumors, all ovarian cysts, anything in the reproductive age group is probably going to be benign, if it's cystic. Most tumors, even if it is cystic and solid, is probably going to be benign. The children age group, anything that shows up, and it's usually going to show up in the form of an abdominal mass because most children don't go in for pelvic exams. They're not going to routinely have an ultrasound. They're going to have pain or a growth. And I'd say 50 percent of those children, if you have a cystic mass, probably 50 percent of those are, unfortunately, going to be cancerous - and most likely treatable, by the way.