May 12, 2021

results from the UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening (UKCTOCS)

A large-scale randomised trial of annual screening for ovarian cancer has failed to reduce deaths from the disease, despite one of the screening methods successfully detecting cancers earlier.

Results from the UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening (UKCTOCS) has been published in The Lancet.

In the UK, 4,000 women die from ovarian cancer each year. It is not usually diagnosed until it is at a late stage and hard to treat. UKCTOCS was designed to test the hypothesis that a reliable screening method that picks up ovarian cancer earlier, when treatments are more likely to be effective, could save lives.

Journalists dialled in to hear two senior scientists from the trial present their findings and answer any questions.

Speakers included:

Prof Usha Menon, Professor of Gynaecological Oncology at the MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL

Prof Max Parmar, Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology and Director of the MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL