Annals of Coloproctology

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Original Article

Clinical Value of the Change in the Serum Carcinoembryonic Antigen (CEA) Level after Curative Surgery in Colorectal Cancer.: Kim, Young Hoon , Bae, Byung Noe , Kim, Ki Hwan , Han, Se hwan , Kim, Hong Joo , Kim, Young Duck , Kim, Hong Yong; J Korean Soc Coloproctol. 2003;19(6):372-378.

Abstract PDF: PURPOSE
This retrospective study was designed to evaluate the clinical value of changes in the serum carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) level after curative surgery in colorectal cancer patients.
METHODS
The clinical value of preoperative serum CEA and dCEA (postoperative 7-day CEA/preoperative CEA) in 115 patients with colorectal cancer, who underwent curative surgery at our Department of General Surgery from 1994 to 1997, was investigated.
RESULTS
The preoperative CEA level was significantly associated with histologic differentiation (P=0.035) and reccurence (P=0.044), but not gender, tumor size, lymph node metastases, Duke's stage, and vascular invasion. dCEA was significantly associated with lymph-node metastases (P=0.017), histologic differentiation (P=0.024), Duke's stage (P=0.021), recurrence (P=0.008), and survival rate (P=0.0379). Especially, in the abnormal preoperative CEA level (>5 ng/mL) group, if dCEA was more than 0.5, these patients had a very poor prognosis (P=0.0003).
CONCLUSIONS
dCEA was associated with more clinicopathologic prognostic factors than preoperative CEA, especially with survival rate. Therefore, we expect dCEA to be a more useful tool for predicting patient outcome.

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