Unsolved Challenges in Breast And Ovarian Cancer Care

This video is brought to you by the EpiFemCare project team and focuses on the unsolved challenges in breast and ovarian cancer. Breast and ovarian cancers affect thousands of women in the EU each year. Pathways for screening, diagnosis and treatment are in place for both diseases, but huge and unsolved clinical challenges remain. At the moment breast cancer screening with mammography is offered in many EU countries. Mammography is effective at finding tumours but recent evidence points to the potential for over diagnosis using this technique. A review in 2012 indicated that 4000 women are over diagnosed following screening, that is to say, they receive surgery and treatment for a cancer that may never have actually caused them any harm, but that screening saves 1300 lives in the UK every year. There is no screening programme for ovarian cancer. Women typically have non-specific symptoms - persistent abdominal pain, bloating, and difficulty eating. These symptoms are often believed to be the result of more common conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, which unfortunately leads to a delay in diagnosis. When ovarian cancer is suspected, a blood test for CA125 may be done, but the test is not specific to ovarian cancer and can be positive in other non-cancerous conditions. Transvaginal ultrasound can also be used, but analysis of the images is subjective. Without an effective diagnostic, ovarian cancer is often discovered only when the disease has spread to other parts of the body and is difficult to treat. Breast and ovarian cancer management then involves surgery, chemotherapy and or radiotherapy to ensure no cancerous cells remain. Chemotherapy is prescribed for most women with disease, but each woman will differ in her response to treatment and it is currently not possible to predict which women would benefit most from receiving which drugs. As every woman is an individual it makes more sense to attempt to personalise their treatment where possible. The EpiFemCare project aims to introduce more effective screening, diagnosis and personalised clinical care for women with breast and ovarian cancers. The next two videos will explore the chosen approach for tackling the issues raised in this video and the project in more detail. The EpiFemCare project is partially funded by the European Commission's Framework Programme 7.