CEA Levels at Recurrence and Metastases; Importance for Detecting Secondary Disease

Rieger, Å. & Wahren, B. CEA levels at recurrence and métastasés; importance for detecting secondary disease. Scand. J. Gastroent. 1975, 10, 869-874. The relation of CEA plasma levels to prognostic factors was studied in 170 patients with various stages of colo-rectal cancer. Several parameters of known relevance for the prognosis were analyzed. Among the patients with involvement of regional lymph nodes at the time of the primary, 53% had a raised CEA value (>5 ng/ml serum) as opposed to 21% when this was not the case (p0.02%). After radical surgery, all patients who remained healthy acquired persistent low plasma CEA, giving the assay a prognostic value. Altogether 20 patients had local recurrences without distant métastasés and were thus potential candidates for a re-operation for cure. 70% had raised CEA plasma values, giving the assay a better than expected usefulness in the clinical follow-up, the significance of the difference from operated and healthy patients or healthy control persons being high, p