Ovarian Cancer: Diagnosis

(asked on 16th June 2015) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what research his Department (a) has commissioned and (b) is aware of on the diagnosis, blood-testing and other testing of ovarian cancer; and if he will make a statement.


Answered by
 Portrait
Jane Ellison
This question was answered on 24th June 2015

The Department’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) funds a range of research relating to ovarian cancer diagnosis and testing. The NIHR Health Technology Assessment programme is currently funding a £1 million project on refining ovarian cancer test accuracy scores. The research aims to identify, refine and validate tests and risk prediction models that estimate the probability of having ovarian cancer for post and premenopausal women with suspected ovarian cancer, applicable to secondary and primary care. It also aims to define thresholds of predicted risk from the test and models that inform decisions for patient management. The project began in October 2014 and the final report is expected to be published in April 2019.

The United Kingdom Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening began in 2000. 200,000 post-menopausal women aged 50 to 74 have been randomised in 12 UK centres. Half the women have been screened, either by annual CA125 blood test or annual trans-vaginal ultrasound, with the remainder as the control group. The study is being funded by the Medical Research Council and Cancer Research UK - the Department is providing the National Health Service costs of the study.

Final results of the study showing the impact of ovarian cancer screening on mortality are due to be published in January 2016.

The NIHR has recently approved £1.3 million funding for a trial looking at whether a newer version of magnetic resonance imaging, multi-parametric MR (mpMR), may be more beneficial for women with ovarian cancer pre-operatively than a CT scan. Small studies suggest mpMR is better at discriminating ovarian cancer from non-cancer (benign ovarian masses) and in seeing how much the disease has spread. This is important for planning the type of surgery and whether surgery will be successful in removing disease.

Reticulating Splines