Catching disease

In the British study, doctors enrolled approximately 200,000 post-menopausal women aged 50 to 74 across the United Kingdom from 2001 to 2005. About 100,000 of those women received no screening tests.
The remaining half were split into two groups. Roughly 50,000 were screened with a blood test. If the blood test results suggested an abnormality, they then had an ultrasound. The rest of the women, nearly 50,000, received an ultrasound only.
In the women who had a blood test first, researchers found 38 who had cancer. In those who only had an ultrasound, there were 32 cancer cases. Using the blood test method, ovarian cancer was picked up 89 percent of the time. With the ultrasound, the rate was about 75 percent.