Abstract            Volume:4  Issue-10  Year-2016         Original Research Articles

Online ISSN : 2347 - 3215 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcret@gmail.com

Currently there is no appropriate clinical algorithm to prioritize and triage patients with malignant tumors to the medical centers for surgery. Studies have shown that HE4 alone has higher specificity than CA125 in diagnosis of ovarian tumors and the combination of these two tumor markers has higher accuracy in detecting malignancies than each one alone. The aim of this study was to find a tumor marker that could be used alone or in combination with other markers for the early detection of ovarian cancers especially the epithelial type as well as their differentiation from benign masses and therefore appropriate triage of patients with malignant masses to medical equipped centers for surgery. In this descriptive – retrospective study 86 patients with ovarian masses hospitalized in Ahwaz Imam Khomeini Hospital for surgery were studied. The records of the patients who had been hospitalized within the years of 2011-2013 was analyzed and the HE4 and CA125 serum levels were measured by ELISA method and also the information in the patient records were recorded in demographic questionnaire and compared. SPSS version 18 was used for statistical analysis. Levels of both markers CA125 and HE4 were significantly higher in epithelial cases (P=0.0001). CA125 marker frequency distribution based on benign or malignant tumor was not significantly different in patients under study (P>0.05) but the marker HE4 was significantly different based on the type of tumor (benign or malignant) in patients under study and its level was higher in malignant cases (P=0.002). Based on the results obtained in the study it is concluded that HE4 is a better marker with better efficiency for the differentiation of benign and malignant ovarian tumors and also in malignant cases it is applied in epithelial and Germ cell differentiation but it has no use in the diagnosis of sex cord tumor and germ cell and thus it is recommended to apply it in patients with a diagnosis of ovarian tumors.

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