Ovarian cancer screening and mortality in the UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening (UKCTOCS)

 Ovarian cancer screening and mortality in the UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening (UKCTOCS): a randomised controlled trial

Open access - The Lancet published December 17, 2015

Background
Ovarian cancer has a poor prognosis, with just 40% of patients surviving 5 years. We designed this trial to establish the effect of early detection by screening on ovarian cancer mortality.

Methods

In this randomised controlled trial, we recruited postmenopausal women aged 50–74 years from 13 centres in National Health Service Trusts in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Exclusion criteria were previous bilateral oophorectomy or ovarian malignancy, increased risk of familial ovarian cancer, and active non-ovarian malignancy......
 

Added value of this study

To our knowledge, this trial is the first randomised controlled trial of ovarian cancer screening to produce findings that show that in postmenopausal women from the general population, annual screening with use of the multimodal strategy is safe and could reduce deaths due to ovarian cancer. These findings are derived from one of the largest randomised trials ever done and renew hope that death rates from the most lethal of all gynaecological malignancies can be reduced through early detection.

Implications of all the available evidence

Our findings suggest that a multimodal approach to screening might detect ovarian cancer sufficiently early to reduce mortality. To establish the magnitude of this reduction in deaths, a longer duration of follow-up is needed. Meanwhile, efforts to refine ovarian cancer screening strategies should continue.