Is There Potential for Pap Smears in Ovarian Cancer Detection?

This is not the first study to be conducted on how pap smears can be used to detect ovarian cancer. In fact, back in 2013, researchers aimed to look into ways to help fight two of the deadliest cancers – uterine cancer and ovarian cancer. Dr. Luis Diaz Jr., associate professor of oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, led the study. He and his team were already using information from the Human Genome Project in an attempt to identify cancerous cells circulating with patients’ bloodstreams and other bodily fluids. So, they decided to speak with Dr. Richard Roden, a gynecological pathologist at Hopkins, on the subject of tumor cells from ovarian, endometrial, cervical and other gynecologic cancers. “We got to thinking that maybe ovarian cancer shed cells into the female gynecological tract and that these would collect in the cervix. Likewise, endometrial cancers. And that using very sophisticated technology, we could detect those mutations,” said Diaz.