Gynecological examinations are “crucial” to increase the early diagnosis of ovarian cancer, as indicated by the head of the Medical Oncology service at Hospital Quirónsalud Córdoba, María Jesús Rubio, who added that up to 70% of cases are diagnosed in advanced stage, which is why he has insisted on the importance of going to routine checks.
Dr. Rubio has pointed out that each year about 3,500 cases of this disease are diagnosed in Spain, 5.1% of cancers among women, behind those of the breast, colorectal and uterus, affects one in every 70 women and it is more common between 45 and 75 years. Ovarian cancer, whose world day is celebrated tomorrow, is the fifth most common tumor in women, the gynecological cancer with the highest mortality.
In initial stages, it does not usually produce any symptoms and the diagnosis is usually an accidental finding in a gynecological examination. In advanced stages of the disease, the symptoms are nonspecific, with pain and abdominal distension and heavy digestion. The symptoms that can make us suspect are the presence of ascites, a mass in the abdomen, a sensation of rapid gastric filling or the existence of a palpable abdominal mass.
Dr. Rubio wanted to emphasize that the belief that if a mother has suffered from ovarian cancer, her daughters will inherit it is not correct, since, although having a direct relative with this disease is an important risk factor, this it only occurs between 10 and 15% of cases. In this sense, he explained that being a family member with a mutation does not mean that the disease will develop, but that there is a greater risk, so the healthy carrier will have to have special controls and decisions will have to be made throughout life to reduce the risk of developing this tumor.
The specialist has also called attention to the belief that when an advanced ovarian cancer is diagnosed there is no curative treatment, and this is not entirely the case. The reality is that although life expectancy is lower the more advanced the disease is, yet 70% of patients are diagnosed in an advanced stage and treated. The combination of surgery with residual disease 0 (no visible macroscopic disease) followed by complementary chemotherapy with antiangiogenic agents – agents that reduce the formation of new blood vessels in the tumor, preventing its growth – and subsequently maintenance therapy, has led to an increase in disease-free survival in patients with advanced disease and high risk of relapse.
The arrival of new therapeutic targets such as PARP inhibitors (an enzyme that repairs damage to cells and is inhibited so that cancer cells do not repair and they die) and their important impact on survival, is changing the prognosis of women with this disease, so today it is necessary to know the BRCA status of these women at the time of diagnosis, that is, to know if the patients suffer from hereditary or sporadic cancer. Furthermore, the combination of these new targets with immunotherapy gives us hope of turning this advanced stage disease into a curable disease.
Quirónsalud in Andalusia
The Quirónsalud Hospital Group currently has seven hospitals in Andalusia located in the cities of Malaga, Marbella, Los Barrios (Cádiz), two in Seville, Córdoba and Huelva, as well as 18 specialty and diagnostic medical centers and a hospital for surgical day, which position him as a private hospital leader in this autonomous community.
About Quirónsalud
Quirónsalud is the leading hospital group in Spain and, together with its parent company Fresenius-Helios, also in Europe. It has more than 40,000 professionals in more than 125 health centers, including 54 hospitals that offer nearly 7,000 hospital beds. It has the most advanced technology and a large team of highly specialized professionals of international prestige. Among its centers are the Fundación Jiménez Díaz University Hospital, Teknon Medical Center, Ruber Internacional, Quirónsalud Madrid University Hospital, Quirónsalud Barcelona Hospital, Dexeus University Hospital, Gipuzkoa Polyclinic, General University Hospital of Catalonia, Quirónsalud Sagrado Corazón Hospital, etc.
The Group works to promote teaching (eight of its hospitals are university hospitals) and medical-scientific research (it has the FJD Health Research Institute, accredited by the State Secretariat for Research, Development and Innovation).
Likewise, its healthcare service is organized in units and transversal networks that allow optimizing the accumulated experience in the different centers and the clinical translation of its research. Currently, Quirónsalud is developing a multitude of research projects throughout Spain and many of its centers carry out cutting-edge work in this area, being pioneers in different specialties such as oncology, cardiology, endocrinology, gynecology and neurology, among others.
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