The diagnostic value of five serum tumor markers for patients with cholangiocarcinoma.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the clinical significance and diagnostic value of the single and combined detection of five tumor markers in patients with cholangiocarcinoma.

METHODS: In total, 296 patients with biliary tract disease who were diagnosed and received treatment at Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University (17113011) during April 2011 to Dec 2017 were chosen for this study. Patients were divided into a cholangiocarcinoma group and a benign biliary tract disease group. Serum was collected from the patients, and the concentrations of AFP, CEA, CA125, CA19-9, CA72-4 and total bilirubin (TBIL) were tested. BM SPSS Statistics 22.0 was used to analyze the data. Receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curves for the single and combined detection of five tumor markers were generated, and the sensitivity, specificity, and area under ROC curve (AUC) were calculated.

RESULTS: The concentrations of serum tumor markers in the cholangiocarcinoma group were higher than those in the benign biliary tract disease group. The AUCs for the single detections of the AFP, CEA, CA125, CA19-9, CA72-4 were 0.654, 0.808, 0.772, 0.833, and 0.743, and the optimal cutoffs were 2.58 ng/mL, 2.85 ng/mL, 23.85 U/mL, 46.75 U/mL, and 2.46 U/mL respectively. The combined detection of CEA, CA125 and CA19-9 had great diagnostic value. Its AUC was 0.888, its sensitivity was 85.1%, and its specificity was 83.1%.

CONCLUSIONS: The levels of CEA, CA125, CA19-9 and CA72-4 had a different diagnostic value for cholangiocarcinoma, and combined serum CEA, CA125 and CA19-9 would have the best clinical diagnostic effect of cholangiocarcinoma.