[Is CA125 useful in the management of recurrence of endometrial carcinoma?]

It has been considered that there is no useful serum tumor marker to diagnose endometrial cancer. But recently several reports describe how the serum CA125 value decreases in patients who have received bilateral oophorectomy and in postmenopausal women. In this study, we therefore determined a new cutoff level for serum CA125 and examined the usefulness of serum CA125 in the assessment of recurrence in 42 endometrial cancer cases. These cases were divided into 3 groups: one of 22 low risk cases, 10 moderate risk cases and 10 high risk cases cased by prognosis 1) In the low risk group, 5 cases had a higher serum CA125 level within 1 month after operation than before. 2) In 151 measurements, the mean CA125 value was 9.7 +/- 3.6U/ml, so we considered that 17 U/ml is the cutoff value for determining recurrence. 3) In the low risk group, the CA125 value was either lower than 17U/ml or it has not continued to increase. 4) We divided the high risk group into 3 subgroups into those who had died within 6 months, those who died within 13-14 months and those who died 2-5 years after the initial treatment. In the group who died 13-14 months after the initial treatment, the seurm CA125 level had continued to be high and there was no change in the value after the initial treatment. In the group who died 2-5 years after the initial treatment, the mean +/- S.D. for serum CA125 was 157.3 +/- 158.3U/ml, the maximum was 377U/ml and the minimum was 28U/ml.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)