As with many cancers prognosis is significantly improved in early stage disease with 95% 5 year survival in Stage 1 disease compared with approx 70% for Stage 2, 25% for Stage 3 and 15% for Stage 4 disease. Unfortunately, most women are diagnosed with later stage disease (Stages 3 & 4) as the cancer becomes easier to detect when symptoms are more noticeable at later stages. So one method is to aim for earlier detection by investigating the potentially vague symptoms that appear earlier, such as bloating, reflux, early satiety etc. There is no acceptable screening test available at present.
Following diagnosis the treatment for most ovarian cancers, apart from the very earliest, involves a combination of chemotherapy and surgery (usually at least a total hysterectomy + bilateral salpingoopherectomy) with the aim of surgery being to remove all visible disease and in advanced ovarian cancer can involve the need to perform bowel resection, cholecystectomy, liver resection, splenectomy and stripping of peritoneum and diaphragm in addition, which all amounts to very long and complex surgery. Timing of chemotherapy can vary, but many women with advanced disease will receive neo-adjuvant chemotherapy followed by surgery and then further chemotherapy, although some women have primary surgery and occasionally the full chemotherapy treatment is given first. Some women will benefit from maintenance therapy such as PARP inhibitors and VEGF inhibitors depending on the type of tumour and whether there are any genetic mutations such as the BRCA gene.
I hope this gives you the information you need.
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