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A Surprising New Way to Prevent Ovarian Cancer
The latest guidelines could help more women prevent a deadly disease that is notoriously hard to detect
8-minute read
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Key takeaways
- New guidance recommends removing fallopian tubes during hysterectomies and offering the procedure instead of tube-tying for permanent birth control.
- Fallopian tube removal was linked to nearly an 80 percent lower risk of developing the most common form of ovarian cancer.
- Women planning abdominal or pelvic surgery can ask whether their fallopian tubes could be removed during the same operation.
When Carla Murray, 52, went in for surgery to remove benign pelvic cysts two years ago, she asked her surgeon to do something extra: remove her fallopian tubes.
Murray, who lives on Long Island, New York, had heard on a podcast that removing her tubes could dramatically reduce her risk of ovarian cancer. She had no family history of the disease, but as a breast cancer survivor, she wanted to do as much as possible to protect herself.
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Four days after the surgery, her doctors called with shocking news: They had found an aggressive form of ovarian cancer in one of her tubes. Murray had six rounds of chemotherapy at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Today, she is in remission, and she believes that podcast may have saved her life.
“If I didn’t know about this, I might not be here right now, or I might be very sick right now,” she says.
Now, new medical guidance could give more women the opportunity to protect themselves from ovarian cancer.
In guidelines released in October 2026, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends removing fallopian tubes during hysterectomies and offering tube removal instead of tubal ligation (tube-tying) for women seeking permanent birth control.
ACOG also encourages gynecologists to work with surgeons in other specialties to make the procedure available during abdominal and pelvic operations, such as ovarian cyst removal, pelvic prolapse repair, gallbladder removal, hernia repair or colorectal surgery — a practice known as “opportunistic salpingectomy.”
The new guidance follows a landmark February 2026 JAMA Network Open study showing that women who have their fallopian tubes removed have nearly an 80 percent lower risk of developing the most common form of ovarian cancer.
That’s important because ovarian cancer is notoriously difficult to detect, says Dr. Kara C. Long, a gynecologic surgeon and ovarian cancer specialist at Memorial Sloan Kettering.
Most women who develop the disease have no family history or known risk factors, she says, and there’s no effective screening test. So by the time they experience symptoms, it has already spread throughout their bodies.
Once that happens, the five-year survival rate is less than 50 percent, according to the American Cancer Society.
A misnamed cancer
For decades, there was no known way to prevent ovarian cancer. Then, in the early 2000s, researchers examining fallopian tubes made a surprising discovery.
“Someone decided to look and examine the ends of the fallopian tube, and they started to see these little microscopic precancers that looked just like the most common ovarian cancer,” Long explains.
It turned out that the most common and deadly form of ovarian cancer — called high-grade serous carcinoma, which accounts for roughly 70 percent of ovarian cancer cases — often begins in the fallopian tubes, not in the ovaries as doctors long believed.
That raised an intriguing possibility: Could removing the tubes prevent the cancer?
Once a woman has finished having children, fallopian tubes — which carry eggs from the ovaries to the uterus — serve no known purpose.
In 2010, doctors in British Columbia began offering fallopian tube removal to women who were already undergoing hysterectomies or who wanted permanent birth control.
Doctors there embraced the idea because “they were just so tired of watching women die,” says Gillian Hanley, an ovarian cancer prevention researcher and associate professor at the University of British Columbia.
Hanley helped lead a team that tracked the results over the next decade, comparing women who had their tubes removed to those who didn’t. The findings became the basis of the February JAMA study, which offered the most striking evidence yet that removing fallopian tubes could prevent ovarian cancer.
Opportunities for prevention
Women who have genetic mutations that put them at high risk of ovarian cancer have long been advised to have their tubes and ovaries removed, typically between the ages of 35 and 50, depending on the mutation.
For women at average risk, doctors generally recommend removing the fallopian tubes only if you’re already having surgery for another reason. You don’t need to remove your ovaries, so your body will still produce hormones.
Until recently, most fallopian tube removals for prevention happened during gynecological surgeries. But now, ob-gyns are working with general surgeons, urologists and other specialists to expand access to patients having other abdominal and pelvic operations.
“The most common opportunity for someone to have their fallopian tubes removed after age 45 is actually at a gallbladder surgery,” Hanley says.
Studies have generally found that adding tube removal to an existing gynecological surgery does not significantly increase the risk of complications. In one clinical trial involving colorectal surgery, Hanley says, it added just four and a half minutes to the operation.
And there’s no firm upper age cutoff. Hanley says women over 50, 60 and even 70 may benefit, depending on their health and circumstances.
Spreading the word
Despite the benefits, many women — and even some doctors — still don’t know about the option, says Dr. Rebecca Stone, director of gynecologic oncology at Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Stone remembers operating on a woman with advanced ovarian cancer who had previously undergone a hysterectomy. Her uterus was gone, but her fallopian tubes had been left behind. By the time Stone saw her, cancer had spread throughout her abdomen.
“I cannot take it anymore,” Stone remembers thinking. “We have to end this.”
To help spread the word, she and her colleagues at other cancer centers launched a public education website, outsmartovariancancer.org, to explain the procedure and answer common questions.
If you’re scheduled to have pelvic or abdominal surgery, ask your doctor about removing your tubes at the same time, Stone suggests. In some cases, your doctor may want to coordinate with a gynecological surgeon.
“If they look at you like they have no idea what you’re talking about, then you should say, ‘Hey, have you seen this website?’” Stone says, referring to outsmartovariancancer.org. “And if they still give you a hard time, you should get a second opinion.”
Stone says insurance companies have started covering the procedure, but coverage is not universal and prior authorization may be required.
Since her cancer diagnosis, Murray says she has been telling anyone who will listen about the procedure that may have saved her life, from strangers in the grocery store to parents at her son’s golf practice.
“I’m going to tell everyone I can,” she says. “It’s not for everybody, but if you let women know about it, then they at least have the information to make a choice.”
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