In an expert article for totalhealth, Consultant Oncologist Mary McCormack provides women with an excellent self-awareness guide, along with practical help for anyone concerned about ovarian cancer.
For most women the changes are subtle, but Ovarian Cancer symptoms include:
- an expanding waistline despite a loss of appetite,
- weight loss especially noticeable on face and limbs
- bloating - symptoms often erroneously attributed, by the patient, to the change in life (i.e. menopause).
- The most common symptom of advanced disease is abdominal pain.
- Some women may experience a change in bowel habit –new onset constipation or diarrhoea often resulting in a referral to a bowel specialist.
Mary McCormack explains how treatment of ovarian cancer is becoming increasingly complex with the emergence of new agents and different chemotherapy schedules. Complete removal of all visible cancer by an experienced cancer gynaecologist and assessment by a specialist ovarian cancer doctor is critical to patient outcome. It is therefore imperative that women with ovarian cancer are managed by a team of doctors with expertise in this disease.
The time of a woman’s life when her ovaries stop releasing an egg (ovum) on a monthly cycle, and her periods cease
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