How is ovarian cancer diagnosed?

  Ovarian cancer is one of the common tumors of female reproductive organs, ranking third in incidence rate after cervical cancer and uterine corpus cancer. However, due to the lack of specific symptoms in early stage and the lack of effective screening means, 70% of patients are already in advanced stage when they are first diagnosed, which is very difficult to treat and has a high recurrence rate, and the 5-year survival rate is very low, only 25%-30%.  Because of the embryonic development, tissue anatomy and endocrine function of ovaries are complex, the tumor it suffers from may be benign or malignant. It is quite difficult to identify its tissue type and benign and malignant. Most of the tumors have spread to the uterus, bilateral adnexa, greater omentum and pelvic organs, so ovarian cancer is really a big problem in both diagnosis and treatment. In the diagnosis of ovarian tumor, detailed medical history and careful physical examination and gynecological examination should be conducted. However, statistics show that about 20% of women will be diagnosed with pelvic masses and 5-10% of them will be operated for ovarian tumors, and only 13-21% of these tumors are malignant, so risk assessment is of great importance for the diagnosis and treatment of ovarian cancer.  Recent studies have shown that the use of combined screening with comprehensive assessment of risk factors such as age and region, i.e., using the ROMA rule, can result in a 90% detection rate of ovarian cancer. The first prospective, double-blind, multicenter Abbott ARCHITECT ROMA study in a Chinese population has been completed and the final data was announced at the Abbott press conference in Xi’an on May 9, 2012, which showed that ARCHITECT ROMA has excellent performance in the preoperative identification of women with pelvic masses. It is expected that this technique will be widely used in China and will be improved over time.