Background: Conventional serum tumor markers (CSTM) are widely used for monitoring patients with cancer. However, their usefulness as a diagnostic tool is controversial in primary or metastatic liver cancer (PMLC).
Aim: To evaluate the diagnostic performance of the most commonly requested CSTM in the diagnostic approach of PMLC.
Material and methods: Review of medical records of patients aged over 18 years with a liver biopsy, attended from 2005 to 2017 in a tertiary hospital and a regional cancer center in Colombia. The results of liver biopsies were compared with tumor markers such as carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), CA 19-9, CA 125 and prostate specific antigen (PSA) using a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis.
Results: We reviewed 2063 medical records and retrieved 118 eligible patients (59 cases and 59 controls, 70% males). Thirty percent had obstructive jaundice. There was heterogeneity in the amount of tumor markers requested according to medical criteria. Only CA 19-9 showed discriminative capacity (> 17.6 U/m), with a cut-off point lower than that reported in the literature and a sensitivity of 69.5%, specificity of 91.6%, a positive likelihood ratio (LR) of 8.32, and a negative LR of 0.33.
Conclusions: Except for CA 19-9, tumor markers were not useful for the initial diagnostic approach in patients with suspected primary or metastatic malignant liver tumors.