The significance of measurement of several oncofetal antigens in diagnosis and management of epithelial ovarian tumors

Association of serum alphafetoprotein (alpha FP), human chorionic gonadotropin beta-subunit (beta-HCG), carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and ferritin (FER) was studied in a group of 72 patients with epithelial ovarian cancer 15 days after surgery and at various times during 2 years. Only CEA and ferritin are able to reflect tumor burden in detecting evolutive disease; alpha FP and beta-HCG have a diagnostic significance in few cases, probably related to a particular, not evident, histological component of the tumor. Nevertheless the data indicate that the use of marker association can improve our capacity to detect, overall in the residual and evolutive disease, the real clinical burden of the patients.