It’s been known for almost 10 years that the term “ovarian cancer” is a misnomer. Almost all of these diseases begin somewhere other than the ovary – most usually in the fallopian tubes, meaning that ovarian cancer as a defined entity doesn’t really exist. So why aren’t most doctors, let alone our patients, aware of this?

When I first began studying this problem, my colleagues and I assumed the knowledge gap was between doctors and patients. But on further inspection, we realized that many doctors were also unaware of the true nature of “ovarian cancer.” Why? Because many of the discoveries about its true origins were made by pathologists. Once prophylactic removal of the tubes and ovaries became commonplace in people who carry the BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations, pathologists (notably Robert Kurman of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine) were able to study the specimens and gain further insight. They found that all of the cancers, or pre-cancers, started in the fallopian tubes or other pelvic organs, but not in the ovaries.