After ruling out the history of heart, liver and kidney diseases, while ovarian cancer is one of the common causes of ascites in middle-aged and elderly women, combined with the fact that the patient did not go to the operating hospital for regular review after surgery, I immediately thought that the patient might have recurrence of ovarian cancer. After physical examination of the patient, the patient’s ascites signs were very obvious, and the whole abdomen had turbid sounds on percussion. Considering that the relevant examinations could not be performed immediately in the outpatient clinic and the appointment had to wait until after the Spring Festival holiday, I immediately contacted the emergency physician to arrange an emergency abdominal ultrasound examination for the patient, and the examination results, as I expected, indicated metastatic cancer in the abdominal cavity and a large amount of ascites. I told the patient to go to the hospital where the ovarian cancer surgery was performed back then as soon as possible, and that further tests were needed to clarify the diagnosis in conjunction with the surgery and pathology back then. I said with some regret, “Why don’t you go to the surgery hospital for a review every year?” The patient’s family told the reason in one sentence, “She just refuses to go to the hospital because she is afraid of the disease. After successful surgery, many tumor patients undergo standardized chemotherapy and radiotherapy to control their disease and enter the stable stage. Some patients are very nervous, suspecting tumor recurrence for no reason, and often do all kinds of checkups; some people are just the opposite, thinking that everything is fine or avoiding medical treatment, and never want to go to the hospital, and only regret when there is recurrence or metastasis. Then why must we insist on regular check-ups? There are proto-oncogenes and oncogenes in every human body. Under normal circumstances, proto-oncogenes maintain the normal function of cells, but when they are activated, the cells will deviate from the normal pathway and transform to malignant cells, becoming cancer cells and growing without limits; oncogenes are the opposite of oncogenes, and when they are inactivated or missing, normal cells will develop in the malignant direction, and people will suffer from tumors. After a tumor is found, surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy only remove the already formed tumor and kill the cancer cells, and no visible tumor is found temporarily, however, the oncogene has been activated, so there is always a possibility of tumor recurrence again. Of course, there are many other factors to decide whether the tumor recurs or not, such as the patient’s psychological state, immune function and so on. Strictly speaking, tumor patients should have regular review during their lifetime. Clinically, there are cases of recurrence after 10 years or even 17 years after surgery. Therefore, regular review is very necessary to detect tumor recurrence in time for timely treatment, but remember that regular physical examination cannot replace the relevant review of tumor patients after surgery.