| ORIGINAL ARTICLE |
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| Year : 2012 | Volume
: 4
| Issue : 2 | Page : 98-101 |
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CA 19-9 as a serum marker in urothelial carcinoma
Mahander Pall1, Javid Iqbal1, Shrawan Kumar Singh2, Satya Vati Rana3
1 Department of General Surgery, PGIMER, Chandigarh, India
2 Department of Urology, PGIMER, Chandigarh, India
3 Department of Gastroenterology, PGIMER, Chandigarh, India
Correspondence Address:
Javid Iqbal
Department of General Surgery, PGIMER, Sector 12, Chandigarh - 160 012
India
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DOI: 10.4103/0974-7796.95555 PMID: 22629005 
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Introduction: CA 19-9 is a carbohydrate antigen related to Lewis A blood group antigen. It is well-known marker for pancreatic carcinoma and is being investigated for other malignancies including carcinoma bladder. We evaluated the role of serum CA 19-9 as a tumor marker and correlated its level with tumor stage and grade.
Materials and Methods: Seventy-five patients with histologically proven urothelial carcinoma were included in this study as case and 25 healthy volunteers as control. Preoperative 5 ml blood sample was collected. Serum level of CA 19-9 was measured using solid-phase enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kit. The value of CA19-9 was expressed in U/ml and 37 U/ml was taken as cut-off upper value of normal.
Results: The range of CA19-9 in patients of urothelial carcinoma was 2 to 122 U/ml with a mean of 26.33±29.28, while in control, it was 8.48±5.01 U/ml (P<0.001). The sensitivity of CA19-9 was 29%. Serum CA19-9 was significantly elevated in invasive disease in comparison with superficial disease (47.17±34.43 vs 16.53±20.13) (P<0.001). Significantly high proportion of patients with invasive disease had value ≥37 U/ml (14/24 [58.3%] vs 8/51 [15.7%]) with P value <0.001. High proportion of high-grade tumor had raised value, 14/34 (41.25%); all patients with metastatic disease had value more than 37 U/ml.
Conclusions: Serum CA19-9 is a marker of aggressiveness of urothelial carcinoma and is almost invariably raised in patients with metastatic disease. Thus, it may be used as a prognostic marker but not as a screening tool due to its low sensitivity. |
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