Survival from ovarian cancer has nearly doubled in the last 30 years, according to Cancer Research UK’s new figures for England and Wales released on Wednesday.

The odds of surviving five years after diagnosis for women with early stage ovarian cancer has risen from 21% in the early 1970s to 41% today.

The charity said an improvement in survival rates means every year over 1,000 more women in England and Wales are surviving ovarian cancer for at least 5 years.

However, they said more needs to be done before we see the same improvements for women diagnosed with advanced stages of the disease.

The improvement in survival for women diagnosed in the early stage is thought to be largely due to better treatments for the disease.

Ovarian cancer is the fifth most common cancer in women in the UK, where around 6,500 new cases are diagnosed every year, and in 2008, it killed 4,400 women.

It is sometimes called the “silent killer” because symptoms are difficult to spot in the early stages, and many cases are only diagnosed after the cancer has spread. It is more common in women who have been through the menopause: some 8 in 10 new cases are in women over 50.

Analysis of data from the East of England Cancer Registry (ECRIC) shows that women diagnosed with stage III ovarian cancer (spread to nearby tissue) have just over 20% chance of surviving for five years, while for women diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer (spread to distant tissue), this drops to below 6%.

Dr James Brenton, who is based at Cancer Research UK’s Cambridge Research Institute, told the press that:

“These latest figures show improvements in treatment, such as centralisation of ovarian cancer surgery and uniform access to chemotherapy, are making a difference in helping more women survive ovarian cancer, particularly those who are diagnosed earlier.”

“But we face a real challenge in translating these improvements in survival to women whose ovarian cancer has already spread,” added Brenton, who also works as an ovarian cancer clinician at Cambridge’s Addenbrooke’s hospital.

An important improvement in chemotherapy treatment occurred in the 1980s when Cancer Research UK scientists developed the chemotherapy drug carboplatin, which treated women more successfully at first diagnosis and also offered new options for treating recurrences.

Tackling the late diagnosis problem requires better screening for ovarian cancer. There is currently a pivotal trial involving over 200,000 women that Cancer Research UK is helping to finance. The trial is testing the effectiveness of screening for ovarian cancer with ultrasound and blood tests.

The trial has shown some promising initial results. It finishes in 2015, and the hope is that the initial promise will hold and lead to a nationwide screening programme that will detect ovarian cancer earlier and thereby save more lives.

Other areas that are showing promise are new drugs, such as the PARP inhibitors that could help women with ovarian cancer who also have faulty BRCA genes.

Brenton said ovarian cancer is beginning to be a more controllable disease, but we still have no cure for most cases.

Source: Cancer Research UK.

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD