Ovarian cancer strikes as many as a half a million women a year worldwide and is one of the deadliest cancers in women. Since most patients aren't diagnosed with ovarian cancer until it has reached a more advanced stage, a large percentage of women who are diagnosed and are treated for ovarian cancer will have a recurrence. There are measures that an ovarian cancer patient can take that will help to reduce that risk.
Instructions
1. Ask your doctor about joining one of the trials for the new ovarian cancer vaccines. At the trials being conducted at the Roswell Park Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York, 18 out of the 22 women in the trials showed a positive immune response to the vaccine. Trials are being conducted on a few different formulas across the country.
2. Eat more vegetables (at least five servings a day) and limit your consumption of dairy. Scientists from the University of Queensland Medical School in Australia found that eating cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower, as well as foods with a high level of vitamin E, survived longer than women who did not. Those who ate the most dairy had a 30 percent higher mortality rate.
3. Talk to your doctor about taking an oral contraceptive. While women who are on hormone replacement therapy have a higher risk, those on oral contraceptives for at least five years have been found to have a lower rate of developing ovarian cancer by up to 50 percent.
4. Keep an eye out for symptoms and ask about CA125 testing for early detection. The earlier ovarian cancer is detected, the greater the chance of successful treatment and the lower the chance of recurrence.
5. Consider radiation therapy after your cancer treatment. Austrian researchers found that women who received radiation therapy in addition to surgery and chemotherapy cut their risk of recurrence by about 20 percent over the two-year and five-year marks.
6. Give tubal ligation some consideration if you have not had a hysterectomy and know that you do not want to have anymore children. It is a procedure where the fallopian tubes are cut, sutured or cauterized between the ovaries and the uterus so that the egg cannot reach the uterus. Tubal ligation has been shown to reduce the risk of ovarian cancer, but researchers aren't sure how.
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