Though the survival of patients with gynecological tumors has been significantly prolonged by radiotherapy, chemotherapy, targeted therapy and other treatments, the way to improve the patients' life quality still needs investigation. Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), which contains tumor genetic information, has the potential in early diagnosis of malignancies due to its high consistency with tumor tissues. Using the key words including "digital PCR", "ctDNA", "technology of digital PCR", and "detection method", "gynecological tumor", we retrieved the original articles and reviews in PubMed and WEB OF SCI database published before May 10, 2019 and performed a thorough review of them. The analysis of ctDNA could provide a comprehensive description of tumor genome, overcome the heterogeneity of tissue biopsy, and supplement the missing mutations in tissue samples. Furthermore, ctDNA could be used as a target of liquid biopsy. Our study also showed that digital PCR technology has a good potential to detect ctDNA in gynecological tumors.
Keywords: Digital PCR; ctDNA; gynecological tumors; monitoring; prognosis evaluation.
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