What Are the Symptoms of Ovarian Cancer?
What should women know about ovarian cancer symptoms? Gynecological cancer expert Dr. Nita Karnik Lee reviews potential symptoms of ovarian cancer and emphasizes the importance of regular communication with the healthcare team.
Dr. Nita Karnik Lee is a Gynecologic Oncologist at The University of Chicago Medicine. Learn more about Dr. Lee.
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Transcript:
Katherine Banwell:
What symptoms should people look for?
Dr. Nita Karnik Lee:
So, this is a very important point. I think the symptoms that people should look for are symptoms that are in the bowel and bladder function area that are different or new to them. This can be changes in urinary frequency, or urgency, or sense of pressure, or not having as much bladder capacity, like having to run to the bathroom more frequently.
Sometimes it can be changes in bowel movements, such as constipation, or not feeling like they’re emptying, or it can be changes in appetite, where people feel full really quickly, where they eat a small amount, and all of the sudden, they just feel like they can’t eat anymore. Obviously, worsening symptoms such as nausea or even throwing up, that’s a little more extreme, but that can happen.
Again, if you’ve had these symptoms for years every time you eat a certain food or something like that, those are probably not new, and that probably is not going to be something cancerous. But if there’s something that’s new or different, the symptom seems to stick out to you that this isn’t your usual routine, and it seems persistent over two or three weeks, and it’s happening almost daily, or at least more frequently than you would expect, then I think that warrants telling your doctor about it, and really advocating, and knowing that not everyone is going to have ovarian cancer, which is good, but knowing that they should do the workup for this just to rule it out.
Katherine Banwell:
How reliable are PAP smears in detecting ovarian cancer?
Dr. Nita Karnik Lee:
PAP smears do not detect ovarian cancer at all. So, people with ovarian cancer have normal PAP smears. It would be very unusual to have an abnormal PAP smear due to ovarian cancer. A lot of the misconception is that patients have said, “Well, I had my annual exam last year. I got my PAP smear every three to five years. That seems negative. So, why did I get this cancer?” But the two are completely unrelated.
