English for Nurses: Ovarian Cancer

Part 1: Vocabulary: Ovarian cancer and its treatment

• BRCA mutation
• debulking
• postmenopausal
• prognosis
• relapse
• survival
• targeted therapy
• tumour resection

Match the terms from the vocabulary list with their correct meanings

1. ___________ : judgement of the likely development of a disease or the chances of a person getting better
2. ___________ : cancer treatment that targets the proteins that control how cancer cells grow
3. ___________ : the fact that a person continues to live
4. ___________ : relating to the time in a woman’s life after she stops menstruating
5. ___________ : become ill again after making an improvement
6. ___________ : reduction of as much of a tumour as possible without completely removing it
7. ___________ : surgically remove a tumour, sometimes before chemotherapy or radiation
8. ___________ : a change in a type of gene that protects a person from cancer

Part 2: Reading

Complete the text using the words below

• tumour resection
• prognosis
• survival
• postmenopausal
• debulking
• BRCA mutations
• targeted therapy
• relapse

A 2021 study which assessed current French practices in the management of patients with advanced epithelial ovarian cancer concluded that the ‘practices appear to be in line with current European recommendations’ and also suggested that in future, ‘one of the best ways to carry out this type of study would be to create a database for the whole of France, which would be an accurate source for all management strategies’.

Ovarian cancer is the eighth most common cancer among women in France, mainly occurring in (1)___________ women. Unfortunately, it is generally diagnosed at an advanced stage (stage IIB-IV) often leading to a relatively poor (2)___________ because of this late diagnosis. In addition, 70% of patients (3)___________ within 3 years of their first treatment and less than 30% of diagnosed patients have a 5-year (4)___________ rate. Around 90% of diagnosed ovarian cancers are epithelial tumours (EOC), in which (5)___________ appear to be involved in 10–15% of the cases with increased sensitivity to chemotherapy.

In recent years, the management of ovarian cancer has become increasingly complex due to surgical and medical advances. In advanced stage EOC, the optimal treatment consists of (6)___________ and the use of a combination of chemotherapy drugs (platinum and taxanes) with or without (7)___________. The objective of the surgery remains macroscopic complete (8)___________, which improves the prognosis of patients in terms of survival.

Part 3: Listening

Watch the video below and answer the questions True or False

1. Nearly half of UK doctors believe that women with ovarian cancer only show symptoms during the late stages of the disease. True / False
2. A new blood test will eliminate the need for surgery to treat ovarian cancer. True / False
3. The new blood test will identify a particular biomarker which is only produced by ovarian cancers, but not in non-malignant diseases. True / False
4. One of the benefits of the new blood test is to eliminate the need for a woman to have surgery to have ovarian cancer diagnosed. True / False
5. Currently, diagnosis of ovarian cancer is made using a cervical smear test. True / False
6. Surgery to remove the ovaries (oophorectomy) to diagnose ovarian cancer is not cost-effective and may cause distress if the ovaries are removed needlessly. True / False