- © 2005 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors
Usha Menon's review of ovarian cancer screening1 appears to misquote the result of the randomized controlled trial of multimodal screening (with the tumour marker CA125 and ultrasonography) by Jacobs and associates.2
In that study the number of deaths from ovarian cancer was 18 among the 10 977 patients in the control group and 9 among the 10 958 patients in the screened group (relative risk of death in the unscreened group 2.0, 95% confidence interval 0.78–5.13); Menon's article seems to state the reverse. Although the difference in number of deaths was not statistically significant, these results represent a possible halving of the death rate by screening, rather than a possible doubling.