It is called the killer that whispers. That subtlety is why it is so deadly.
Few women know it is the most lethal type of reproductive cancer.
Few even can name the symptoms, so insidious that women may pass off the problem as indigestion until it is too late. Some 27,000 American women will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer this year, and 14,500 will die. Roughly 40 percent of ovarian cancer patients survive five years. Contrast that with breast cancer, where early-detection and treatment improvements are letting more than 70 percent of patients live that long. Ovarian cancer usually is detected only after it has spread out of the ovaries and throughout the abdomen, making it much harder to treat.