"The severity of Ovarian Cancer in Pakistan is of prime importance as around 13.6 percent of females have been suffering from this cancer in the country and around 70 percent are diagnosed at advanced stages only," said health experts in a session of international awareness symposium on gynaecology organised by the Ziauddin University and Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists on Wednesday.
The objective was to enlighten local health providers and broaden their horizon on the rapidly changing advances in modern treatment. Chief guest Dr Noor Jehan Samad welcomed the participation of young doctors, saying, "It is time to synergise the efforts by medical fraternity, policy makers, government and media. Awareness can play a very significant role in dealing with the challenge of ovarian cancer in Pakistan. The international awareness symposium on gynaecology organised by the Ziauddin University will stimulate other institutions to follow the footprint to address the growing challenge." She also stressed on proper antenatal clinics and preventive obstetrics and early detection of diabetes mellitus. "Diagnostic of ovarian cancer at early stages will cut down the medical burden and suffering of patients and family," she added.
Professor Rubina Hussain, the Head of Department of Gynaecology at the Ziauddin Hospital said, "We should keep pace up with the changes and development in women care. Pakistan should follow footprint of international health care system and we must adapt ourselves according to it. Our objective must be to ensure better treatment for the patient. We have a complete research department at the Ziauddin University and Hospital to address this issue and we also publish research papers in medical journal for the same purpose."
Professor Dr Tariq Siddiqui, Professor and Director Ziauddin Cancer Hospital, talked about "after surgery and before" and said the treatment of malignant disease like other disciplines in medicine is highly data dependent and data synthesis leads to therapeutic decisions. He also spoke about the problems in assessing patients after surgery and a positive cancer report. "The reports that patients bring are from all over the place and standard are lacking generally except in the large referral hospitals and radiology testing in the country is an industry with no controls and cost determines where patients go for CT scans, MRI tests," he said adding that the few CT films which are available often have no relevance to the lesions described discussion of the test. "Giving awareness to patients in this regard is also important as they often go for cheaper tests but end up spending more when the tests are not up to the quality standards," he added.
Dr Tasneem Aslam Tariq, Dr Adnan Zuberi, Dr Qurat-ul-Ain Badar, Fauzia Pesnani, Amina Mujib Khan also spoke.
They said ovarian cancer was a common and fatal gynaecological malignancy with high morbidity and mortality. In Pakistan ovarian cancer is the second most common cancer among women accounting 13.6 percent of female malignancy. They said long-term survival chances were less than 30 percent at advance stages and symptoms are non-specific.
"Tumour markers are non-specific and CA-125 [Cancer Antigen -125] is not the marker for ovarian cancer only and it may be raised in other conditions as well," they added.-PR
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