Comparison of preoperative and postoperative CA 125 levels in epithelial over carcinomas

Objective: retrospective evaluation of cancer antigen (ca) 125 levels in epithelial ovarian cancer patients. material and method: among 580 ovarian cancer cases; one-hundred eighty seven epithelial ovarian cancer patients at republic of turkey, ministry of health, aegean obstetrics and maternity training and research hospital between the dates of january 1st 1998 and december 31st 2007 were included in this study. age of the patients, histopathological type of the cases, type of operation, pre-operative&postoperative ca-125 levels, also after the first and sixth dose of chemotherapy ca-125 levels were investigated. while assessing the findings of the study, spss (statistical package for social sciences) for windows 16.0 program was used for statistical analyses. chi-square test was employed to compare qualitative data results: the average age of the patients was 51.7±11. the most frequent (83 patients) histopathological type was serous epithelial ovarian cancer (44.4%) and musinous epithelial ovarian cancer (31 patients-16.6%). generally, as the patients were evaluated according to the type of surgical procedure, optimal surgery was the most frequently preferred one (70.6%), however, among patients aged <30 suboptimal surgery was used more commonly. ca-125 levels of 187 cases preoperatively, after the first and sixth dose of chemotheraphy were recorded, but only 40 patients’ post-operative ca-125 levels were reached. the threshold (cutoff) level of ca-125 as a predictive of surgery type was found to be 613. in this case, the sensitivity and specificity were found to be 85% and 66%, respectively. the regression rates of ca-125 levels of pre&postoperative and after the first dose of chemotherapy were recorded and 2-fold regression according to the preoperative levels of ca-125 was found to be significant (p<0.001). however, 2-fold regression of ca-125 levels showed no significant relationship with age, histopathological type and applied surgical type (p>0.05). discussion a) failure of regression of postoperative ca-125 levels lower than 35 u/ml supports that surgery may not be enough to treat ovarian cancer alone. b) additional studies are needed to assess the impact of the type of surgery according to the levels of pre-operative ca- 125 at survival and disease-free period.