Does serum CA125 have clinical value for follow-up monitoring of postoperative patients with epithelial ovarian cancer? Results of a 12-year study

BACKGROUND The detection of CA125 has been used in the follow up of ovarian cancer. At present, some scholars believe that serum CA125 has no clinical value for the follow-up monitoring the recurrence for postoperative patients with epithelial ovarian cancer, but in our clinical follow-up found that when the serum CA125 value is <35 U/ml, postoperative patients of epithelial ovarian carcinoma had already showed recurrent lesions in some ecological and imaging examinations or in laparotomy exploration and biopsy, and we given the patients timely treatment, the prognosis were improved. METHODS Retrospective analysis the values of serum CA125 of 342 postoperative patients of epithelial ovarian carcinoma, consisting of 296 non-recurrent and 46 recurrent cases, as well as 3175 cases of menopausal women and 603 cases of postoperative patients of gynecological malignant tumor for the follow-up from January 2005 to December 2016. RESULTS The median value of CA125 for non-recurrent patients of epithelial ovarian carcinoma is 8.9 U/ml, the median value of CA125 for non-recurrent patients of epithelial ovarian carcinoma is 29.7 U/ml; for menopausal women, 8.1 U/ml; and for postoperative patients of gynecological malignant tumor, 7.2 U/ml, whereas the mean ± standard deviation is 9.0 ± 1.9 U/ml, 31.3 ± 16.2U/ml, 8.0 ± 1.1 U/ml, and 6.8 ± 2.1 U/ml, respectively. CONCLUSIONS If the value of the CA125 for postoperative patients of epithelial ovarian carcinoma between 10 and 35 U/ml indicates a relative risk of recurrence. When the value of CA125 is higher than 10 U/ml and continuously increased, need to be vigilant and should be combined with imaging examination (PET-CT). This result may improve the prognosis for recurrent patients because of the early detection of recurrent lesions and early retreatment.