NEW TESTS COULD PICK UP OVARIAN CANCER EARLY
HUNDREDS of Australian women will trial a new screening test designed by Melbourne scientists to detect ovarian cancer before it turns deadly.
Dubbed the silent killer, it claims 1000 lives every year, mainly because most sufferers have only vague symptoms until the cancer has spread.
Only 30 per cent of women diagnosed with advanced disease will survive five years.
By the time Melbourne mother Leane Flynn, 50, discovered she had ovarian cancer, the tumours on her ovaries were as big as coke cans and one was sandwiched between her liver and diaphragm.
“I had been carrying around these tumours, but I felt fine, except for some bloating and the need to urinate more frequently just before I was diagnosed,” Mrs Flynn said.
She is desperate to see the same success in detection and treatment for other female cancers, such as breast and cervical cancers, replicated for ovarian cancer.
Despite surgery and chemotherapy which decimated the tumours, they grew back in her diaphragm, spleen, liver and bowel.
“This is a horrible cancer and all we’ve got are the standard treatments that we’ve had for 30 years, which I know will eventually stop working, so I’m scrambling,” she said.
Dr Andrew Stephens from the Hudson Institute of Medi- cal Research hopes his screening test can improve detection.
The Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation will announce today it will contribute almost $900,000 to his trial as part of the $2.8 million injection into medical research.
Around 300 women from Victoria and South Australia will be recruited for the new screening tests..