Abstract

Background: Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide however no serum marker is routinely recommended till now.

Patients and Methods: This is a prospective case control study including two groups of adults, Group I: Includes healthy volunteers as controls. Group II: Includes patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Plasma CA19-9 levels were measured at baseline by ELISA before first line chemotherapy. Primary end point was comparison between the levels of CA19-9 in patients and controls. Secondary endpoint was correlation between CA19-9 level and clinical response (CR), progression free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in advanced NSCLC.

Results: 34 healthy adults and 35 patients with advanced NSCLC were included and followed up during the period from October 2009 to February 2013 with median follow up of 10.5 months. The mean and median pre-treatment plasma CA 19-9 concentrations of NSCLC patients were 240.7 and 231U/ml respectively. There was statistically significant difference between the patient and control groups (p < 0.001). No significant correlations were found between CA19-9 levels and CR, PFS and OS p-values: 0.5, 0.3 and 0.6 respectively Conclusion: Plasma CA19-9 is a reliable marker for advanced NSCLC.

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