Július Palaj
Gastric cancer is on the 4th place in the incidence and in the 2nd place in mortality worldwide, respectively among all cancer
diseases. Conventional markers CEA, C19-9, C72-4 are usually higher for advanced stages therefore they are utilized
for treatment monitoring and they are not suitable for timely diagnostics and screening. Pre-treatment values
of the combination of three markers CEA, C19-9 and C72-4 were examined at the Clinic of Oncologic Surgery of St. Elisabeth’s
Cancer Institute (OUSA). We have found out that in the population of 136 patients with completely pre-treatment
examination of three markers, CEA marker has been increased for 11 (8.1%) patients, C19-9 for 19 (14%) and
C72-4 for 37 (27%) patients.
For 64 patients with gastric cancer (further only GC) diagnosed between the 1st Jan 2009 and the 31st Dec 2011 long-
term surviving has been evaluated in dependency on positive or negative markers (at least one of the tested ones).
From 27 patients with minimally one positive marker 20 patients (65%) died and 7 patients (35%) survive. From 37 patients
newly-diagnosed in the same time period with normal value of all markers 12 patients (32%) died and 25 patients
(68%) survive.
The set of conventional markers for malignant gastric tumours has been augmented by biomarkers. HER-2 for GC and
KIT protein for GIST are utilized as predicative factors of response to biological treatment. In recent years, proteomics
and genomics introduce new markers which can most likely be used for screening and timely diagnostic of GC.