Estimation of usefulness of monitoring tissue polypeptide antigen--TPA-M concentrations in the effectiveness surgical treatment of urinary bladder cancer.

BACKGROUND Of all cancer tumours, urinary bladder cancer is the fourth must common in men and the seventh in women. The aim of this work was to answer the question whether tissue polypeptide antigen (TPA-M) determination in patients after electroresection of urinary bladder cancer can be used to establish the probability of tumour recurrence. MATERIAL AND METHODS The research included 98 patients, all of whom had undertaken electroresection of urinary bladder tumour (TURT), which enabled its removal, and then estimation of malignancy and progression stage according to the international TNM scale. The mean age was 62.7 years. All patients had blood samples taken to determine TPA-M and then underwent routine cystoscopy examination. RESULTS The patients with tumour recurrence (60, mean age 64 +/- 10) had TPA 30.2 +/- 4.3 U/l, the patients without recurrence (38, mean age 61.3 +/- 11) had TPA-M 26.2 +/- 3.18 U/l (p > 0.1). Taking the TPA-M threshold point 85 U/l as normal, true-positive results were 16.3%, true-negative were 31.6%, false-positive results were 7.1% and false-negative were 44.9%. The ROC curves with the calculated area under them are the measurement of the diagnostic estimation of TPA-M concentrations in specificity and sensitivity categories. CONCLUSIONS For the examined group the calculated P was 0.45. If P value is under 0.5 it is considered that the test should not be used in diagnosing recurrence of urinary bladder cancer.