Loay Kassem: The tumor markers are normal – how could I have cancer?
Loay Kassem, Assistant Professor of Clinical Oncology at Kasr AlAiny School of Medicine, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“The tumor markers are normal. How could I have cancer?
I hear this a lot from my patients. Serum tumor markers are tricky tests.
Yes, they increase in many tumor types (The diagram below shows the marker for every type of cancer).
However, the problem is that these tests are neither sensitive, nor specific. This means that some patients might have cancer but the tumor marker is normal.
Also, the other way around, the test might be high in some patients with other inflammatory conditions but no cancer.
This is why we don’t use serum tumor markers to screen for or to diagnose cancer most of the time.
One important use of these tests is to follow up patients with cancer and high tumor markers to assess their response to therapy.”
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