Article Text
Abstract
Introduction/Background*Most patients diagnosed of advanced epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) will relapse within the first years after the treatment. It is fundamental to find a marker for recurrence monitoring. Our objective was to perform a descriptive analysis of our data to estimate the rate of recurrence of EOC and the effectiveness of Ca-125 and HE-4 to agree with the radiologic diagnostic of relapse.
Methodology All patients were diagnosed of any stage of EOC from January 2014 to June 2020. They were retrospectively selected for the assessment of HE-4 and Ca-125 levels.
All patients selected had to undergo surgical treatment with optimal cytoreduction and chemotherapy if indicated, and they had to show radiological complete response after surgery. Out of 105 patients diagnosed during this period, 79 subjects met the inclusion criteria. 7 of them were lost during the follow-up, so 72 patients were included in the analysis.
Result(s)*47 out of 72 patients relapsed during the follow-up (65,3%). Out of all relapses, 32 patients had available data and reached normal levels of HE-4 after the surgery. 15/32 presented positive levels of HE-4 when the relapse was diagnosed (46,9%). Moreover, in 6/32 cases the levels of HE-4 tend to increase in the moment of the relapse, even though the value did not become positive (18,8%).
Out of all relapses, 43 patients had available data and reached normal levels of Ca-125 after the surgery. 20 out of 43 presented positive levels of Ca-125 when the relapse was diagnosed (46,5%). In addition, in 15/43 cases the levels of Ca-125 tend to increase in the moment of the relapse, even though the value did not become positive (34,9%).
30 patients had available data and reached normal levels of HE-4 and Ca-125 after the surgery. 9/30 cases presented positive levels of both HE-4 and Ca-125 in the moment of relapse (30%).
Conclusion*Most patients showed an increase of biomarkers in agreement with radiologic relapse; in half of the cases the markers level became positive, but in some patients the values tend to increase despite being in the negative range. Both markers used together seem to be useful for the follow-up.