The value of serum CA 125 and association CA 125/CA 19-9 in endometrial carcinoma.

One hundred and twelve women with endometrial carcinoma were studied with serum sampling to determine preoperative and postoperative levels of CEA, CA 15-3, CA 19-9, TPA and CA 125. After surgical treatment 88 patients had stage I, 8 stage II, 14 stage III and 2 stage IV disease. Before treatment the sensitivity of CEA, CA 15-3, CA 19-9, TPA and CA 125 was 22.3% (25/112), 32.1% (36/112), 22.3% (25/112), 45.5% (51/112), 33.9% (38/112), respectively. According to pathological stage a statistically significant difference between intrauterine (96 cases) and extrauterine disease (16 cases) was noted only for CA 125 (28.1% vs. 68.7%) and CA 15.3 (28.1% vs. 56.2%). In relation to histological grading CA 125 rises progressively from well-differentiated cases to poorly-differentiated tumors. During the follow-up the most reliable marker was CA 125: values more than 35 U/ml of this marker resulted positive in 50% of relapsed cases and only in 5.1% of disease-free cases, thus demonstrating a high specificity. The association of various markers during the follow-up allowed us to reveal interesting results only for the CA 125/CA 19-9 combination. In fact the combined use of these markers permitted a high sensitivity (83.3%), with only 12.8% false positive cases, so with a high specificity.