A University of Kentucky study just published in Obstetrics & Gynecology shows that annual ultrasound screening of at-risk asymptomatic women increases the survival rates of women with type I and type II epithelial ovarian cancer.

The results come from the UK Markey Cancer Center's Ovarian Cancer Screening Program, a 30-year study initiated in 1987 by gynecologic oncologist Dr. John van Nagell, Jr. and the UK College of Medicine. The goal was to study whether transvaginal sonography (TVS) screening could be an effective means of early ovarian cancer detection. Women who enrolled in the study were provided a free annual transvaginal ultrasound screening.

To date, more than 46,000 women have been given free screenings. To be eligible, women had to be asymptomatic and either age 50 or older, or age 25 or older with a documented family history of ovarian cancer in a close relative.

Through the study, 71 invasive epithelial ovarian cancers and 17 epithelial ovarian tumors of low malignant potential were found. The 5-, 10-, and 20-year disease-specific survival of patients whose invasive ovarian cancers were detected by screening was more than 30 percent higher than unscreened women with clinically detected ovarian cancer from the same geographic area treated at the Markey Cancer Center.