When facing ovarian cancer treatment, understanding the choices doctors make and why is helpful, and it can strengthen a patient’s resolve.
“A lot of women present (for diagnosis) with a lot of extra fluid,” says Dr. Lori Weinberg of Minnesota Health. “So we can actually remove some of that fluid, spin it, and find out if there are cancer cells floating in it.”
Blood tests for tumor markers help determine if the cancer is indeed ovarian, and not, say, a colon or pancreatic cancer that metastasized to the ovaries, making a similar presentation. “Often, an elevated CA-125 with a normal tumor marker for other cancers points us in the direction of ovarian cancer,” Dr. Weinberg explains.
“When we approach ovarian cancers, we usually approach it two different ways. We talk about staging for ovarian cancer if someone has a large mass that we need to remove. And then, if we find out there’s a cancer – we need to find out if that cancer has spread or not. So when we’re doing staging, we’re looking for microscopic disease that could be hiding in lymph nodes, the peritoneum, or something called the omentum … to find out if this is a more advanced disease or if it is something that is confined to the ovary. This situation is very different than when we take a patient to the operating room to do, for example, a debulking surgery. The goal there isn’t to determine a patient’s stage. We’re not looking for microscopic traces. It’s to remove all of the visible disease that we can.”
Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.
Dr. Lori Weinberg is a gynecologic oncologist with Minnesota Oncology. Read More
When facing ovarian cancer treatment, understanding the choices doctors make and why is helpful, and it can strengthen a patient’s resolve.
“A lot of women present (for diagnosis) with a lot of extra fluid,” says Dr. Lori Weinberg of Minnesota Health. “So we can actually remove some of that fluid, spin it, and find out if there are cancer cells floating in it.”
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Blood tests for tumor markers help determine if the cancer is indeed ovarian, and not, say, a colon or pancreatic cancer that metastasized to the ovaries, making a similar presentation. “Often, an elevated
CA-125 with a normal tumor marker for other cancers points us in the direction of ovarian cancer,” Dr. Weinberg explains.
“When we approach ovarian cancers, we usually approach it two different ways. We talk about staging for ovarian cancer if someone has a large mass that we need to remove. And then, if we find out there’s a cancer – we need to find out if that cancer has spread or not. So when we’re doing staging, we’re looking for microscopic disease that could be hiding in lymph nodes, the peritoneum, or something called the omentum … to find out if this is a more advanced disease or if it is something that is confined to the ovary. This situation is very different than when we take a patient to the operating room to do, for example, a debulking surgery. The goal there isn’t to determine a patient’s stage. We’re not looking for microscopic traces. It’s to remove all of the visible disease that we can.”
Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.
Dr. Lori Weinberg is a gynecologic oncologist with Minnesota Oncology. Read More
