According to a new study that was done in the UK, doctors have found 7 symptoms that are now linked to ovarian cancer. Ovarian cancer was once thought as the "silent killer" with no known symptoms being present.

''Ovarian cancer is not silent, it's noisy. It's just we're not very good at deciphering the noise," the author of the study William Hamilton, MD, told WebMD.

In the study, the doctors evaluated 212 women who were age 40 and above and had already been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. They compared these women to over a 1,000 healthy women looking for any symptoms or signs that were out of the ordinary. They looked at all of the women's medical records before any cancer diagnosis was made.

They found 7 symptoms that were associated with the women who had been diagnosed with the ovarian cancer:

• Abdominal distention
• Abdominal pain
• Frequent urination
• Loss of appetite
• Rectal bleeding
• Postmenopausal bleeding
• Abdominal bloating

Abdominal distention was the most common symptom for ovarian cancer and the study showed that 1 in 40 women who had this symptom was diagnosed with cancer. Distention of the abdomen is a progression of the stomach getting bigger slowly rather than simple bloating were it will come and go.
Being aware of these symptoms and discussing them with your doctor can help with early intervention of the cancer, which can mean a full recovery if it is diagnosed early enough.

The study was published online at BMJ.com