The Environment Envir. The ovaries are two small egg-filled sac's one on each side of the uterus. The ovaries also produce the female hormone estrogen .
Ovarian cancer is caused by malignancies that occur in the ovaries.
It's the fifth most common cancer, and has the highest mortality rate of any cancer among women. In 1997, about 26,800 American women were diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and the disease resulted in 14,200 deaths. It can also travel through the blood and the lymph system to other parts of the body. It starts in the epithelium , the outer cover of the ovary, and can be classified by the different types of cells they contain. But the cellular type is less important than whether or not the disease is diagnosed early and confined to the ovary, or after it has spread.