Women across America have been delivered a wake-up call regarding uterine cancer, but it probably will take at least several years to ascertain how well they’ve paid attention.

Hopefully, women of the Southern Alleghenies region will be among those eventually delivering the message that they have responded correctly.

According to a report in the Feb. 13 Wall Street Journal, the disease will kill an estimated 13,250 women in the United States this year, on its way, the American Cancer Society says, to surpassing ovarian cancer and becoming the deadliest gynecologic cancer.

The cancer organization is emphasizing that uterine is the only cancer for which survival has fallen in the past four decades, and that is alarming, considering all the strides in cancer detection and treatment that have been forthcoming during those decades.

While it is premature for panic, it is not premature for women to learn all they can about this form of cancer, so they will recognize the warning signs if they start to appear. As with all other forms of cancer, early detection and treatment of uterine cancer improves chances for survival, but all of that is rooted in a commitment to vigilance.

Stated or implied messages in the following paragraph from the Feb. 13 article deserve ample reflection and, beyond that, action by women who have reason to believe they might have a problem.

“Case rates have been increasing by about 1% annually over the past decade, with steeper rises for Black and Hispanic women,” the paragraph begins. “Rising obesity rates are partly to blame because excess weight increases estrogen levels that can fuel the cancer … and fewer women are getting their uteruses removed to treat abnormal bleeding or noncancerous fibroids, leaving them exposed to the risk cancer develops in the organ as they age.”

However, here is where a mystery develops — the lack of a valid explanation for why the disease in question is showing up in women under 50, when it is more common after menopause.

The Journal quoted Megan Clarke, a gynecologic cancer researcher at the National Cancer Institute, who said, “This was considered a cancer that had very good survival and was very easy to treat, but the epidemiology has changed, and I think opinions are starting to change as well.”

That observation carries with it the desire for women to pay attention to future emerging developments.

“The rules we had before don’t apply,” said Dr. Leslie Boyd, a gynecologic oncologist at New York University Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center.

Uterine cancer, which also is referred to as endometrial cancer, comes in two forms. The more common form is slow-growing, linked to elevated estrogen levels. It is curable when caught early.

The other, rarer type is not hormonal and is more difficult to treat.

It is well known that abnormal bleeding often signals uterine cancer, especially after menopause, but common, noncancerous tumors in the uterus, called fibroids, as well as conditions including endometriosis that cause abnormal bleeding, can make it difficult to realize that something else is wrong.

For women, the bottom line is this: Uterine cancer always has been a concern, but with the unknown referred to above, that concern needs to be ramped up.

Panic, no. Regular doctor visits and routine testing? By all means, yes.