The Study
Mortality impact, risks, and benefits of general population screening for ovarian cancer: the UKCTOCS randomised controlled trial.
This study tested if checking healthy women every year for ovarian cancer could save lives. It found that even though the tests found more early cancers, they didn’t stop more women from dying. So, the tests found cancer sooner—but that didn’t mean they saved more lives.
Analysis score
Maximum 90 for a randomized controlled trial.
Where the score came from
Doctors tested two ways to find ovarian cancer early in women over 50: one used a blood test and ultrasound, the other used only ultrasound. Both found more early cancers, but neither saved more lives.
Where does this study sit?
Reviews of RCTs (Meta-analyses)
Max 100Randomized Trials
Max 90Reviews of Cohort Studies
Max 85Cohort Studies
Max 72Reviews of Case-Control Studies
Max 63Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional & Case Series
Max 50Expert Opinion
Max 575 / 100
Quality score
Participants are randomly assigned to treatment or control groups, minimizing bias. The gold standard for testing whether an intervention causes an effect.
Key takeaways
Summary
Based on the study abstract and findings.
- 1No, because even though more early cancers were found with multimodal screening, it didn’t lead to fewer deaths — and many women had risky surgeries for false alarms.
- 2Multimodal screening found 39% more early-stage cancers, but 14 women out of 10,000 had unnecessary surgery.
- 3Ultrasound-only found no more early cancers and caused 50 unnecessary surgeries per 10,000.
- 4Death rates were the same in all groups.
Score breakdown, methodology, conflicts of interest, evidence analysis & raw study data
Publication
Journal
Health technology assessment
Year
2023
Authors
U. Menon, A. Gentry-Maharaj, M. Burnell, A. Ryan, Jatinderpal K Kalsi, N. Singh, A. Dawnay, L. Fallowfield, A. McGuire, S. Campbell, S. Skates, Mahesh K B Parmar, I. Jacobs
Related Content
Claims (7)
Finding and treating very slow-growing cancers through aggressive screening doesn’t help people live longer overall — it just finds cancers that wouldn’t have hurt them anyway.
No solid scientific studies have shown that getting a full-body MRI scan when you feel fine helps you live longer.
When doctors use both a blood test and an ultrasound to check for ovarian cancer, fewer women end up having unnecessary surgeries compared to using just the ultrasound — so the combo method is safer in that way.
Getting yearly blood tests and ultrasounds for women over 50 might catch more ovarian cancers early, but it doesn’t help them live longer, even after 16 years.
Testing healthy older women for ovarian cancer with blood tests or ultrasounds doesn’t save lives and often leads to risky surgeries that aren’t needed — so it’s not worth doing.
When checking for ovarian cancer, using a combination of tests finds more cancers early than using just an ultrasound, but both methods are really good at saying you don’t have cancer when you really don’t.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making health decisions.