Breakthrough in ovarian cancer prevention

(Jean-Benoit Legault/ The Canadian Press) — A preventative surgical procedure developed in British Columbia appears to drastically reduce a woman’s risk of developing the most common and deadly form of ovarian cancer, a merciless disease of which half of the victims will survive at most five years after diagnosis.

Opportunistic salpingectomy involves the proactive removal of the fallopian tubes of a woman who is already undergoing a routine gynecological procedure, such as a hysterectomy or tubal ligation.

Women who underwent this procedure were subsequently 78 per cent less likely to develop ovarian cancer, reveals a research letter recently published in the medical journal JAMA Network Open. And in the rare cases where the disease did occur, it was biologically less aggressive.

“There is no such thing as a pleasant cancer, but ovarian cancer is a very nasty disease,” commented Dr. Lucy Gilbert, director of the Division of Gynecological Oncology and the Women’s Health Research Unit at the McGill University Health Centre. (…)