Ovarian Cancer Screening Using Ultrasound and Ca125 Finds both Early and Late Stage Cancers, but Also Many False Positives A new study from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, shows that currently available screening methods such as transvaginal ultrasound (TVU) and testing for a protein biomarker called CA-125, alone or in combination, can detect ovarian cancer but can also produce many false-positive test results, causing needless surgery. This report, which summarizes preliminary results from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial, appears in the November 15, 2005 American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.* CA-125 and TVU have been considered as potential screening techniques, although studies to date have not shown that they can be effective and thus they are not currently recommended. The long-term objective of the PLCO Trial is to determine whether screening with TVU and/or CA-125 decreases ovarian cancer mortality in women age 55 to 74. Of the 28,816 healthy women who underwent the initial (baseline) screening, 1338 (4.7%) had an abnormal TVU and 402 (1.4%) had an abnormal CA-125 blood test. Thirty-four women (0.1%) had abnormal results in both screening tests. Among the women with abnormal test results, 29 tumors were detected, 20 of which were invasive cancers. Women who had an abnormal test result in one or both screening tests underwent a variety of diagnostic procedures to determine whether cancer was present, including 57 0 women who underwent a surgical procedure as follow-up. Thus, 541 women underwent surgery but did not have cancer. TVU and CA-125 cannot currently be recommended for widespread use in the general population. The results published in this report reflect analysis of the initial baseline screenings for women enrolled between 1993 and 2001. At the time of the baseline examination, both TVU and CA-125 had low predictive values -- a measure of how likely a person with a positive test result is to have the disease of interest -- when used to screen healthy women for ovarian cancer. Many investigators feel that an acceptable predictive value for an ovarian cancer screening test is around 10%. The predictive values of these screening tests were 3.7% for an abnormal CA-125 test, 1% for an abnormal TVU, and 23.5% if both tests were abnormal. Although having an abnormality in both tests had a fairly high predictive value, only 9 of the 29 tumors (31%) were associated with abnormalities in both tests. SOURCE: The National Institutes of Health Thanks to docguide.com, November 2005 Remember we are NOT Doctors and have NO medical training. This site is like an Encylopedia - there are many pages, many links on many topics. Support our work with any size DONATION - see left side of any page - for how to donate. You can help raise awareness of CAM.