OVARIAN CANCER DEFINITION

It's a cancer that strikes a woman's ovaries, the small almond-shaped organs that produce and release eggs. Unfortunately, the disease is characterised by symptoms so subtle that they often go unnoticed until the cancer has spread elsewhere. Most women who develop it, in fact, get a diagnosis only when the disease is far advanced. The cure rate for advanced ovarian cancer is about 20 percent, a number that approaches 50 percent if the initial surgery and chemotherapy is successful.

Each year about 200 women in this country die of ovarian cancer, and about 330 are diagnosed as having it.