Background: Paper deals with detection of the early disease progression in breast cancer patients during follow up using tumor markers.
Methods and results: The basic group of 1184 patients with breast carcinoma in follow up after primary therapy were examined from 1996 to 2002. Sera were tested using commercial kits CA 15-3 (MEIA, Abbot), CEA (IRMA, Immunotech), TPA (IRMA, Byk Sangtec), TPS (IRMA, Beki). Results were compared with the retrospectively confirmed clinical status of individual patients. The authors calculated optimal cut offs and sensitivities and their combinations for particular tumor markers at 95% level of specificity. Best sensitivities for the detection of distant metastases into bone, liver, lung and brain was achieved by CA 15-3 (53-68%). As an optimal combination of tumor markers seems to be the tricombination CA 15-3, CEA and TPA. All the tumor markers have insufficient sensitivity for the metastatic process into the lymphnodes.
Conclusions: As optimal combination of tumor markers during the follow up seem to be tricombination CA 15-3, CEA and TPA, but also the clinical relevance and cost effectiveness of these assessments have to be considered. For the tumor disease follow up only CA 15-3 has sufficient sensitivities (at 95% specificities) for the early diagnosis of the metastatic process.