Ovarian Cancer that forms in tissues of the ovary. Most women have one or more risk factors for ovarian cancer. But most of the common factors only slightly increase your risk.
There are several ways you can reduce your risk of developing the most common type of ovarian cancer, epithelial ovarian cancer.
It is important to realise that some of these strategies lower your risk only slightly, while others lower it much more. Some strategies are easily followed, and others require surgery. If you are concerned about your risk of ovarian cancer, talk to your health care professionals.
1 Avoiding Certain Risk Factors:
Some risk factors for ovarian cancer, like getting older or having a family history, cannot be changed. But women might be able to lower their risk slightly by avoiding other risk factors, for example, by staying at a healthy weight, or not taking hormone replacement therapy after menopause.
2 Oral Contraceptives:
Using oral contraceptives (birth control pills) decreases the risk of developing ovarian cancer for average risk women and BRCA mutation carriers , especially among women who use them for several years. Birth control pills do have some serious risks and side effects such as slightly increasing breast cancer risk.
3 Breastfeeding:
The longer a woman breastfeeds, the lower her risk of developing ovarian and fallopian tube cancer.
4 Pregnancy:
The more full-term pregnancies a woman has had, the lower her risk of ovarian/fallopian tube cancer.
5 Gynecologic Surgery:
Both tubal ligation and hysterectomy may reduce the chance of developing certain types of ovarian cancer, but experts agree that these operations should only be done for valid medical reasons — not for their effect on ovarian cancer risk. Tubal ligation is having the fallopian tubes “tied” or closed surgically to prevent pregnancy. Doctors recommend a bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy, which is the removal of both ovaries and fallopian tubes, for women with a high risk of ovarian/fallopian tube cancer.
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