Serum concentrations of squamous-cell carcinoma antigen and tissue polypeptide antigen in the follow-up of patients with vulvar cancer

✍ Scribed by Lukas Hefler; Katrin Frischmuth; Georg Heinze; Gerhard Sliutz; Sepp Leodolter; Alexander Reinthaller; Christian Kainz; Clemens Tempfer

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: French
• Weight: 42 KB
• Volume: 83
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0020-7136
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-0215(19991008)83:2<167::aid-ijc4>3.0.co;2-e

✦ Synopsis

Our aim was to evaluate the clinical usefulness of serum concentrations of squamous-cell carcinoma antigen (SCC-Ag) and tissue polypeptide antigen (TPA) in the follow-up of patients with vulvar cancer. We measured SCC-Ag and TPA in 480 serum samples of 82 patients with squamous-cell vulvar cancer. Results were correlated with clinical data. SCC-Ag, TPA and the combination of SCC-Ag and TPA reached a sensitivity and specificity of 27%/97%, 28%/75% and 40%/73%, respectively. The sensitivity and specificity of the marker combination SCC-Ag and TPA was not significantly higher compared with SCC-Ag alone (McNemar's test, p ‫؍‬ 0.6 and p ‫؍‬ 0.09, respectively). Of the 35 patients with recurrent disease during follow-up, 19, 6 and 10 developed local, regional and distant recurrent disease, respectively. SCC-Ag showed lead-time effects in 26%, 75% and 50% and TPA in 25%, 0% and 33% of patients with local, regional and distant recurrent disease, respectively. The combination of SCC-Ag and TPA showed lead-time effects in 50%, 75% and 50% of patients with local, regional and distant recurrent disease, respectively. The difference between median leadtimes of the combination of SCC-Ag and TPA and SCC-Ag alone was not statistically significant (Mann-Whitney U-test, p ‫؍‬ 0.4). Our data show that serum SCC-Ag displays good sensitivity/specificity characteristics in the follow-up of vulvar cancer patients, with lead-time effects seen in 75% and 50% of patients with regional and distant recurrent disease, respectively. Furthermore, our data indicate that combining SCC-Ag with TPA is not a successful strategy to improve the sensitivity or the duration of lead-time effects in the follow-up of patients with vulvar cancer.