PBS Documentary, “The Whisper: The Silent Crisis of Ovarian Cancer.”

To raise ovarian cancer awareness, Long Island’s Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) affiliate WLIW-Channel 21 will present the exclusive New York metro area premiere of a half-hour television documentary entitled, “The Whisper: the silent crisis of ovarian cancer.” The program will debut at 7 P.M. (EDT) on Friday, September 24 in the New York metro area, and will be rolled out to other PBS affiliates across the country over the next 12 months.

More than 13,000 women this year will be struck down by ovarian cancer, which is the most lethal gynecologic cancer. Ovarian cancer statistics are staggering; nearly three out of every four women with this disease will die because of it. Chances of survival can improve if it is detected early and confined to the ovaries. Unfortunately, only about 25 percent of women are diagnosed with early stage disease because there is no reliable early stage screening test available. Victims of ovarian cancer include President Obama’s mother Ann Soetoro, Coretta Scott King and comedienne Gilda Radner.

To raise awareness of this devastating disease, Long Island’s Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) affiliate WLIW-Channel 21 will present the exclusive New York metro area premiere of a half-hour television documentary entitled, The Whisper: The Silent Crisis of Ovarian Cancer.  A preview trailer of the documentary is provided below.

The Whisper:  the silent crisis of ovarian cancer — PBS Documentary

The program will debut at 7 P.M. (EDT) on Friday, September 24, with encore presentations scheduled for 10:30 P.M. on Monday, September 27, and 11:30 P.M. on Friday, October 1. The program will be rolled out to other PBS affiliates across the country over the next 12 months.

The documentary was made possible by a generous grant from the Sonia L. Totino Foundation and the Rocco Totino family. Mr. Totino, a New York resident, lost his wife Sonia to ovarian cancer several years ago, and wished to honor her with an initiative that seeks to raise awareness among women of the warning signs of ovarian cancer, and by doing so, reduce the number of women lost to this devastating disease.

Sharon Blynn is the founder of Bald is Beautiful & the host of “The Whisper: the silent crisis of ovarian cancer” (a PBS documentary)

The host featured in the documentary is Sharon Blynn, who is an ovarian cancer survivor and the founder of the Bald Is Beautiful campaign. Through this campaign, Sharon wants to send a message to women that they can “flip the script” on the many traumatic aspects of the cancer experience, and embrace every part of their journey with self-love, empowerment, and a deep knowing that their beauty and femininity radiate from within and are not diminished in any way by the effects of having cancer.  As an “actorvist,” Sharon communicates the Bald Is Beautiful message through acting, writing, modeling and spokesperson appearances, and she continues to do patient outreach through one-on-one correspondence via her website, hospital visitations, being a chemo buddy and other such activities.

Other Bald Is Beautiful highlights include an international print campaign for the Kenneth Cole “We All Walk in Different Shoes” campaign, an international print and TV campaign for Bristol-Myers Squibb, appearances in “Sex and the City” and a principal role in Seal’s music video “Love’s Divine.” She has been featured in magazine and newspaper articles in Glamour, Vogue, Marie Claire (US & Italia), Organic Style, BUST, the Miami Herald and other publications. Sharon has also performed onstage as part of the “Off the Muff” collective, and she was commissioned to write and perform her one-woman theatrical piece “How Are We Feeling Today?” which saw its world premiere in Los Angeles and was presented in New York City. A QuickTime video compilation of Sharon’s past projects can be viewed here.

Blynn was awarded the prestigious 2010 Lilly Tartikoff/Entertainment Industry Foundation Hope Award at the 2010 National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship “Rays of Hope Gala” held in Washington, D.C. Sharon has also been selected to be part of Lifetime Television Network’s Every Woman Counts “Remarkable Women” campaign, and will appear in a 30-second spot that will run the week of Sept 17–23, 2010.

The nationally-renowned ovarian cancer experts featured in the documentary include:

Barbara A. Goff, M.D., Professor, Gynecologic Oncology, University of Washington School of Medicine. Dr. Goff is the principal investigator responsible for critical ovarian cancer research which revealed that ovarian cancer is generally accompanied by four primary warning signs or symptoms — bloating, pelvic or abdominal pain, difficulty eating or feeling full quickly, and urinary symptoms (urgency or frequency).  Goff’s research became the foundation for the Ovarian Cancer Symptoms Consensus Statement, which was sponsored and co-authored by the American Cancer Society, Gynecologic Cancer Foundation, and Society of Gynecologic Oncologists in July 2007.

Beth Y. Karlan, M.D., Board of Governors Endowed Chair, Director, Women’s Cancer Research Institute and Division of Gynecologic Oncology, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center; Professor, Obstetrics and Gynecology, David Geffen School of Medicine ,University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Dr. Karlan is a world-renowned expert in the field of gynecologic oncology, specifically ovarian cancer surgery, early detection, targeted therapies and inherited cancer susceptibility. She is a past-president of the Society of Gynecologic Oncologists, the Editor-in-Chief of Gynecologic Oncology, and has held many international leadership positions.  She is committed to both scientific advancement and enhancing public awareness about gynecologic cancers.

John Lovecchio, M.D., Chief of Gynecologic Oncology, North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System; Leader of the North Shore-LIJ Cancer Institute; Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the New York University School of Medicine.  Dr. Lovecchio’s major areas of research are in uterine and ovarian cancers, and he holds administrative and leadership positions in regional and national professional organizations and has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals. Lovecchio is widely regarded as a leading physician-surgeon and has received numerous awards in recognition of his academic and professional achievements.  In the documentary, Dr. Lovecchio offers his insight on ways to combat this deadly form of cancer. He is also credited as the technical advisor for the documentary.

Maurie Markman, M.D., Vice President of Patient Oncology Services & National Director of Medical Oncology, Cancer Treatment Centers of America.  For more than 20 years, Dr. Markman has been engaged in clinical research in the area of gynecologic malignancies, with a particular focus on new drug development and exploring novel management strategies in female pelvic cancers.  Dr. Markman’s many accomplishments include serving as Editor-In-Chief for the Current Oncology Reports journal and Oncology (Karger Publishers) journal, and serves as Chairman of the Medical Oncology Committee of the national Gynecologic Oncology Group.  In addition, Dr. Markman has served on numerous editorial boards, including the Journal of Clinical Oncology and Gynecologic Oncology.  Dr. Markman has been the primary author, or co-author, on more than 1,000 published peer-reviewed manuscripts, reviews, book chapters, editorials or abstracts, and he has edited or co-edited 14 books on various topics in the management of malignant disease, including Atlas of Oncology and the most recent edition of Principles and Practice of Gynecologic Oncology.

“Taking part in this program was a labor of love and concern for my patients,” said Dr. Lovecchio, who is based at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset. “I wanted to make sure that women are getting the right information, and are aware of the signs and symptoms of ovarian cancer. They must be alert to their own bodies and recognize that abdominal bloating, abdominal pain, pelvic pain, urinary symptoms, difficulty in eating, and feeling full quickly may not be the norm.”

“I wanted to make sure that women are getting the right information, and are aware of the signs and symptoms of ovarian cancer. They must be alert to their own bodies and recognize that abdominal bloating, abdominal pain, pelvic pain, urinary symptoms, difficulty in eating, and feeling full quickly may not be the norm.”

— John Lovecchio, M.D., Chief of Gynecologic Oncology, North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System

“Women should seek the advice of experts trained in this field and not think that they are being alarmists. Other medical experts and patients interviewed in this documentary are all seeking the same outcome — to make every woman aware of her own body and to encourage every woman to seek help if she feels that something is not quite right,” said Dr. Lovecchio, who was interviewed for the documentary along with Drs. Goff, Karlan, and Markman.

Source:  PBS Documentary on Ovarian Cancer, News Release, North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, September 9, 2010.

Symptoms Of Ovarian Cancer Remain Relatively Stabile Over Time As Reported By High Risk Women

Researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center reported recently that symptoms of ovarian cancer tend to be relatively stable over time for women who are at increased risk of ovarian cancer based upon family history of cancer or BRCA 1/2 gene mutation.

Symptom Screening + CA-125 Blood Test = Better Detection of Early Stage Ovarian Cancer

” …Research has found that when used alone, a simple four-question symptom-screening questionnaire and the CA125 ovarian-cancer blood test each detect about 60 percent of women with early-stage ovarian cancer and 80 percent of those with late-stage disease. This study found that when used together, the questionnaire and blood test may boost early-detection rates to more than 80 percent and late-stage detection rates to more than 95 percent. …”

“Women’s reports of persistent, recent-onset symptoms linked to ovarian cancer – abdominal or pelvic pain, difficulty eating or feeling full quickly and abdominal bloating – when combined with the CA125 blood test may improve the early detection of ovarian cancer by 20 percent, according to new findings by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center published online today in CANCER.

Research has found that when used alone, a simple four-question symptom-screening questionnaire and the CA125 ovarian-cancer blood test each detect about 60 percent of women with early-stage ovarian cancer and 80 percent of those with late-stage disease. This study found that when used together, the questionnaire and blood test may boost early-detection rates to more than 80 percent and late-stage detection rates to more than 95 percent.

‘Of course, it is the increase in the detection of early-stage disease that is the most exciting,’ said lead author M. Robyn Andersen, Ph.D., an associate member of the Public Health Sciences Division at the Hutchinson Center. Cure rates for those diagnosed when the disease is confined to the ovary are approximately 70 percent to 90 percent. However, more than 70 percent of women with ovarian cancer are diagnosed with advanced-stage disease, when the survival rate is only 20 percent to 30 percent.

‘This research suggests that if a woman has one or more symptoms that are new for her, having begun within the past year, and if the symptoms happen nearly daily or at least 12 times a month, that may well be a signal to go in and discuss those symptoms with her doctor,’ Andersen said. ‘It’s probably not going to be ovarian cancer, just as most breast lumps are not breast cancer, but it’s still a sign that it might be worth checking with her doctor to see if a CA125 blood test and transvaginal ultrasound may be appropriate.’

Assessing the symptoms included in the symptom-screening index may already be done by some doctors based on a consensus statement issued last year by the National Institutes of Health. The researchers hope their symptom index will help doctors know which among their patients who complain of symptoms such as abdominal swelling and pelvic pain might have cancer.

The symptom-screening index, developed in 2006 by paper co-author Barbara A. Goff, M.D., professor and director of Gynecologic Oncology at the University of Washington School of Medicine, is not used proactively in clinical general practice, but Andersen and colleagues are conducting a pilot study to assess the value of using it as a screening tool among normal-risk women as part of their routine medical-history assessment.

For the just-published study, the researchers administered the symptom questionnaire to 75 women about to undergo surgery for pelvic masses who were later diagnosed with ovarian cancer (the case group), and 254 healthy women at high risk for ovarian cancer due to a family history of the disease (the control, or comparison, group). The cases were recruited through Pacific Gynecology Specialists at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, and the controls were recruited through the Ovarian Cancer Early Detection Study, a joint project of the Hutchinson Center and the Marsha Rivkin Center for Ovarian Cancer Research.

The National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute, the Marsha Rivkin Center for Ovarian Cancer Research and the Canary Foundation supported this research.”

[Quoted Source: Symptom screening plus a simple blood test equals a 20 percent jump in early detection of ovarian cancer, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center News Release, June 23, 2008.]