inquiry

[graham6]

what the survival rate without treatment?

[nyc lady]

Without treatment meaning no chemo or no surgery?

Although, extremely rare I know someone that was diagnosised 23 years ago, stage 3A and never had chemo.  I believe the survival rate would depend on the sucess of the debulking sugery.  

Without surgery...that is a whole different story.

[shaneekirk]

It also depends on the *type* of OvCa and the staging...  You need to try to find more information before you start looking for stats.

[alanpvegas]

They are right, it first depends on your stage which is hard to determine without surgery.  For example there is only so much the medical team can determine by scans, surgery usually reveals more and provides the 'official' stage of the disease.

Second, without treatment your cancer will spread.  This is called metastasis.  Ovarian Cancer starts, of course, with the ovaries.  This is near vital organs such as your intestines, lymph nodes, etc.  In-fact lymph nodes are a favorite 'highway' for cancer of many types to use to spread themselves all over.

Without treatment you will eventually have other complications such as bowel obstrutions which are common with ovca, other organs will be eventually impacted like the lungs, kidneys, spleen, bladder, etc.  It's nasty...you don't want to delay treatment.

If the fear is chemotheraphy, there are anti-nausea drugs (called antiemetics) that are very powerful nowadays and help many people.  There are drugs that can help with white blood cell production.  Also there are new clinical trials coming out to hopefully reduce some common side effects while being more effective (in various stages of development and study right now).  So there are many advances that were not available even 10 years ago.  Thankfully ovarian cancer is receiving more attention that it has before and is actually being picked apart at the gene level by the NCI as one of three cancers they will fully investigate! Yay! :)

-Alan