Cytokeratin-derived markers of lung cancer

Various evaluation methods are available for aiding clinicians in lung cancer management. Some of these methods are highly specific. However, they are also invasive and burdened by non-negligible complication rates (e.g., mediastinoscopy); other methods are highly accurate and noninvasive, but require expensive equipment and well-trained personnel (e.g., PET scanning); others are fast, inexpensive and safe. However, their diagnostic yield is low and requires further clinical testing (an example of such tests is the chest-x-ray film). There is probably only one way to perform an easy, inexpensive, repeatable test, which is also fairly accurate and predictive. This is tumor marker testing, which--as a large and specialized literature shows--can be highly effective when based on a cytokeratin-derived marker assay.