Opportunistic Salpingectomy to Prevent Ovarian Cancer with Dr. Gillian Hanley

In this episode of the IJGC podcast, Editor-in-Chief Dr. Pedro Ramirez is joined by Dr. Gillian Hanley to discuss opportunistic salpingectomy for the prevention of ovarian cancer. Gillian Hanley, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at the University of British Columbia and a Canada Research Chair in Population-based Gynecologic and Perinatal outcomes. She does health services research in gynecology, primarily in the area of ovarian cancer prevention. Highlights: 1. Opportunistic salpingectomy, the removal of fallopian tubes during a hysterectomy with ovarian preservation or instead of tubal ligation, has been recommended as ovarian cancer prevention following evidence that the fallopian tube is the tissue of origin for most high grade serous ovarian cancers. 2. We recently published the first data comparing observed to expected numbers of serous and epithelial ovarian cancers following opportunistic salpingectomy done for the purposes of ovarian cancer prevention in British Columbia, Canada.

3.Our data strongly suggest that opportunistic salpingectomy is effective in preventing serous ovarian cancers. There were 0 serous cancers in the opportunistic salpingectomy, and if they had been arising at the same rate as in the control groups (hysterectomy alone and tubal ligation), we would have expected 5.3. 0 is below the low end of the 95% confidence interval.