The aims of this current study were to evaluate the diagnostic properties and discriminative values in the metastatic disease of serum carcinoembryonic antigen ...
Turkish Journal of Cancer Vol.30 / No. 4/2000
Clinical usefulness of serum assays of carcinoembryonic antigen and beta 2-microglobulin in the diagnosis and discrimination of metastasis of lung cancer FARUK TAŞ, ADNAN AYDINER, VİLDAN YASASEVER, RİAN DİŞÇİ, ERKAN TOPUZ Department of Medical Oncology, Istanbul University Institute of Oncology, Istanbul-Turkey The aims of this current study were to evaluate the diagnostic properties and discriminative values in the metastatic disease of serum carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and beta 2-microglobulin (BMG) in lung cancer. One hundred and thirty-five patients with lung cancer were evaluated. Sixty-six (48.8%) patients had squamous cell, 31 (22.9%) had adenocarcinoma, 28 (20.7%) had small cell, 5 (3.7%) had large cell, and 5 (3.7%) had mixed (adenosquamous) histology. Mean age was 60 (range 33-75) and 122 (90.4%) patients were male. Fifteen (53.6%) patients with small cell lung cancer (SCLC) had extensive and 37 (34.5%) patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) had metastatic (stage IV) disease. Serum CEA and BMG values were obtained at baseline. Upper limits of normal levels for CEA and BMG were 10 ng/ml and 3 mg/L, respectively. Chi-square test was used for comparisons. Positive rates of BMG were higher than CEA in almost all histologic types, but these were not significant. While BMG values did not reveal any difference based on stage, CEA was elevated in NSCLC (p0.05). Like CEA, patients with either small cell or non-small cell lung cancer had similar BMG positive rates (42.8% and 36.4%, respectively). In non-small cell lung cancer, no difference was detected among histologic types (p>0.05). The patients with both non-small cell and small cell lung cancer had more elevated CEA positive rates in metastatic disease (stage IV) than nonmetastatic
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Fig 2. Distribution of the serum tumor markers CEA and BMG values in patients with lung cancer (log scale) disease (45.9%/24.3% p
