(Yahoo Canada) — In Canada, it is estimated that endometrial and ovarian cancers affect approximately 10,000 Canadian women per year. The majority of affected women are diagnosed at an advanced stage, when the disease has spread and is often incurable. This happens because early-stage ovarian cancer is usually asymptomatic and symptoms of late-stage disease are nonspecific.
The clinical symptoms associated with ovarian cancer are often vague and mistaken for other conditions, particularly issues that affect the gastrointestinal system, or simply changes in a woman’s body as she ages, such as bloating and increased urinary frequency. Therefore, ovarian cancer is often referred to as the “silent killer”.
A discovery by Dr. Lucy Gilbert, Director of the McGill University Health Centre Division of Gynecologic Oncology, and her team hopes to drastically reduce the burden of disease and improve women’s lives. (…)