Women Around The World Don’t Know Enough About Ovarian Cancer

The research shows that most women didn’t notice the symptoms of the ovarian cancer. A survey held in 45 countries which shows the ignorance by patients about their conditions, and it was obvious by the women’s answers in the survey that their doctors are more ignorant then they are thus the diagnoses took a long time.

These were the results of online survey in which 1,531 women were diagnosed with the cancer and were conducted by the World Ovarian Cancer Coalition. According to World Health Organization, it is the eight common type of cancer in women and in the present year 300,000 women were diagnosed with it and it is estimated that one in six will die within three months of diagnosis but the most shocking thing which they come to know after the survey was that the two-thirds of the women surveyed either had never heard of ovarian cancer or were familiar with the name but didn’t know anything about the disease. About Eighty-six percent of the Brazilian people in the survey have little or no knowledge about ovarian cancer.

Amanda Tabral Vieira Benites at her age of 21 she had no symptoms when she had a checkup from her regular doctor. Her doctor regularly did pelvic ultrasounds, not a common practice in the U.S. And he found something. She says that “At the time I knew exactly nothing about my cancer, nothing,” she moved from her home town to São Paolo for access to better care, and then things go super-duper fast for her. Therefore she went through four surgeries and six months of chemotherapy. She’s guardedly optimistic – the cancer has been gone for nearly five years.

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Actually the symptoms were unclear in the early stages and she didn’t get the clue they were obvious when cancer started growing. She suffered from abdominal bloating, indigestion, nausea, diffuse pain and low energy. In the survey it can be seen that women who were dealing with the symptoms, half of them with ovarian cancer sought care within a month of when the symptoms first appeared and the family history issue appears in only five women.

Survey shows that women in the countries who are low or middle income had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer were asked by their doctors or through social media to take an hour to fill out an online questionnaire in which Fifty seven percent were in stage 3 or 4 when diagnosed. A study designer named Frances Reid says that “women in the survey were younger and likely to be more educated than the average woman with ovarian cancer, making the results likely to be a best-case scenario.”

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The average time that was noticed from to diagnose the cancer from the very first symptoms was 31 weeks; it took less time in the rich countries because of the better facilities available.

According to the static results, Italy have the best results with 62 percent of women diagnosed within a month of a first visit on the other hand U.K. was far behind at 30 percent and Germany was quick with diagnosis, but poor about access to specialists. An American Cancer Society epidemiologist Lindsey Torre says that “What they report is consistent with what we know about ovarian cancer”. An Indian gynecological oncologist in Kolkata participated in the survey his name was Manas Chakrabarti, he says that “when he went to medical school many years ago, he was taught that ovarian cancer has no symptoms. Now he knows that it does but says many doctors around the world don’t. “Its symptoms are so subtle that unless your mind is open, your eyes don’t see”.