Validade do CA 15.3 para o seguimento de pacientes tratadas de câncer de mama

Abstract

Women treated of breast cancer have survived more in the last decades. However, the detection of relapse. of disease has been the major difficulty in order to stablish treatment in an early stage, when the disease is still microscopic. It would be necessary a specific and sensible feasible test to achieve that, and until a few years ago it did not exist. Tumor markers come to help the follow-up of treated women. This article intents to analyse the role ofCA 15.3 in breast cancer in the Hospital Naval Marcílio Dias (HNMD). Sixty-three women were included and 63 tests were studied. Results of 59 tests are related with absence or presence of disease and it is determined the specificity, sensibilty, and positive and negative predictive values of CA 15.3. The study shows CA 15.3 as an useful test to follow-up treated women, considering its sensibility (72.2%) and specificity (75.6%), but it has a high false-positivity (43.5%) what does not permit its use as a diagnostic test. Finally, it is evaluated costs of the follow-up, based on conventional tests (mamography, chest radiography, abdominal ultrasonography, bone scan, and liver function tests) oron CA 15.3. This represents 10.2% of costs of all other togheter and an alternative to screening the cases which should be undergone to them.