04-15-2007, 04:20 PM
A 49-year-old woman comes to the office for a periodic health maintenance examination. She is in good health and has no complaints. However, she has a "very important question." She says that one of her best friends recently passed away from ovarian cancer, and she is very worried because the woman never experienced any symptoms and did not have a family history of the disease. She wants to know if you can review her history and tell her if there is anything that will affect her risk for developing the disease. You flip through her chart and notice that she had menarche at age 11 and is still menstruating. She and her husband were trying unsuccessfully to conceive for 7 years, she took oral contraceptive pills for 18 years, and she has always been about 60-70 pounds overweight. The most accurate statement concerning this patient's risk for developing ovarian cancer is that she
A. decreased her risk by taking oral contraceptive pills (OCPs)
B. needs to have periodic pelvic sonograms because oral contraceptive pills put her at an increased risk
C. needs to have periodic pelvic sonograms because she never had kids and is overweight, which increases her risk for developing the disease
D. should consider having a hysterectomy and bilateral oophorectomy because there is a good chance that she will develop the disease due to the fact that she took OCPs, never had children, and is overweight
E. should take hormonal replacement therapy when she reaches menopause to decrease her risk of developing the disease
A. decreased her risk by taking oral contraceptive pills (OCPs)
B. needs to have periodic pelvic sonograms because oral contraceptive pills put her at an increased risk
C. needs to have periodic pelvic sonograms because she never had kids and is overweight, which increases her risk for developing the disease
D. should consider having a hysterectomy and bilateral oophorectomy because there is a good chance that she will develop the disease due to the fact that she took OCPs, never had children, and is overweight
E. should take hormonal replacement therapy when she reaches menopause to decrease her risk of developing the disease