A new study has called the effectiveness of current ovarian cancer screening techniques into question while also revealing the risk of false-positive test results for women who get screened regularly.

The study, which was conducted by a team from the National Health Institute, followed 70,000 women who were split into roughly equal-sized groups.

The study found that women who were screened annually for ovarian cancer were just as likely to die from the disease as women who didn’t get screened regularly. The study reported that 212 women in the screening group were diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and 118 of them died from the disease. In the other group there were 176 diagnoses and 100 deaths among those that didn't get regular screening.

Even more surprising was the finding that frequent screening could actually increase the risk of false-positive test results.

According to Dr. Christine Berg, there were more than 3,000 cases of false-positives in the screening group, and of those, more than 1,000 women who didn't end up having ovarian cancer had surgery because of a positive test result. Those surgeries resulted in serious complications, including infection or cardiovascular complications, in 163 women.

The combination of blood tests and ultrasounds that her team tested "shouldn't be used for screening in the average-risk woman", said Berg. "I don't think it's working at all".