Serum pancreatic oncofetal antigen: its clinical usefulness for screening pancreatic cancer in combination with tests for other tumor markers.

Screening for pancreatic cancer was carried out by serum pancreatic oncofetal antigen (POA) tests in 440 out-patients with abdominal complaints, with concomitant assay of carcinoembryonic antigen, alpha-fetoprotein and ferritin. POA was positive in 13 patients, of whom 3 cases of pancreatic cancer, and 4 of other malignant diseases were diagnosed while the remaining 6 were non-malignant. Of these out-patients, 5 cases were finally diagnosed as having pancreatic cancer by further examinations. Of these 5 patients, POA was negative in 2, of whom one was positive for CEA and AFP. Accordingly, when POA test was applied concomitantly with the other 3 marker tests, the detection rate of pancreatic cancer was elevated to 4/5. Twenty-three patients were found to have malignant diseases and 20 of them were positive for at least one of the 4 markers tested. These results suggest that serum POA assay is useful for screening the pancreatic cancer, especially when the other tumor markers are assayed concomitantly.