There’s a lot of information published in newspapers, magazines, on television and on the internet about what does and doesn’t cause cancer. It’s important for all women to be able to separate fact from fiction about risk factors for ovarian cancer. Experts, researchers and the media sometimes use statistics to describe the chance, or risk, a woman has of getting ovarian cancer or reducing her chance of getting ovarian cancer. The statistics can often be presented in different ways and it’s important for women to understand what they mean in order to work out how the information might affect them.
Absolute and relative risk
Risk can be described in two different ways:
absolute risk and
relative risk.
- Absolute risk refers to your chance of developing a specific disease over a specified time period. For example, the absolute risk of a woman developing ovarian cancer in her lifetime is 1 in 67. Absolute risk is of most value to women trying to work out how a particular risk might apply to them personally.
- Relative risk compares two absolute risks and describes the difference between the two. Relative risk tells you how much your risk might change based on something you do. For example, relative risk will show how your risk of ovarian cancer will change if you use oral contraceptives compared to your risk if you don’t use oral contraceptives. Most scientific, medical and media reports use relative risk.
