VIDEO: Increasing ovarian cancer awareness in PCPs, OB/GYNs

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The challenge we have is that ovarian cancer is not as common as breast cancer, right? So if you look at the numbers, it's probably a tenth as common. But if you look at the number of deaths to new case ratio, right? Ovarian cancer is about three to four times more lethal than breast cancer. In fact, it's more lethal than many of the other common cancers, even like lung cancer. And so it's super important to be familiar with the genetic risks for ovarian cancer, right? Being able to counsel patients, when to go get testing, when to talk to their families about this. That's incredibly important. Being a familiar with the treatment modalities that have changed over the last 10 years with the development of PARP inhibitors and now the new development of other DNA repair factor inhibitors, which are showing quite exciting activity in the clinic. So I think being familiar with the fact that it's not a very common disease, but it's a deadly disease.

It's also fair to say that we don't really have symptoms that are pathognomonic for ovarian cancer. So women can come to our primary care physician complaining of abdominal pain, bloating, constipation, diarrhea. None of those things are going to make you think cancer. But as we tell our patients, you know, they have to listen to their body, or if those things persist for longer than it would be expected or normal for them, they really have to try to advocate for further workup, right? Whether that's ultrasound or imaging of some sort. So, you know, I think it's great to be able to partner with our community doctors and tertiary care physicians. Education is really important, not just for the patients, but also for the doctors, right? Things are constantly changing. And so, you know, it's not so easy to stay on top of everything all the time. But I think the awareness that there's a genetic factor to this disease, that the BRCA mutations are actually more common than people used to think. We used to think that it's only five, maybe 10% of cases are genetic in that they have a BRCA mutation. Numbers suggest it's probably closer to 20%. And then there's also the acquisition of BRCA mutations in the tumors themselves, what we call somatic mutations versus germline mutations. All of these things are important to sort of be familiar with and aware so that you can actually advise your patient properly.