[What importance do tumor markers have in life insurance medicine?]

From the whole host of older and new tumour markers a short description is given of the most important in clinical practice. Nowadays no tumour marker fulfills the criteria which must be demanded of a screening test for an unselected population. Owing to insufficient specificity and sensitivity and with the low prevalence of individual tumour diseases in the population, screening tests would lead to an irresponsibly high number of wrong findings, i.e. particularly of false positive results with all the diagnostic consequences while, moreover, because of the number of false negative results nowhere near all tumour diseases would be recognized. The significance of tumour markers in insurance medicine is as in clinical medicine in the supplementing of oncological aftercare programmes. Here they have become an essential part of the parameters to be checked regularly. It must remain open at present whether owing to the development and new discovery of monoclonal tumour antibodies a reassessment will also be possible in insurance medicine.