首页|Persistently Rising Alpha-fetoprotein in the Diagnosis of Hepatocellular Carcinoma: A Review
Persistently Rising Alpha-fetoprotein in the Diagnosis of Hepatocellular Carcinoma: A Review
扫码查看
点击上方二维码区域，可以放大扫码查看
原文链接
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), one of the most common malignant tumors worldwide, is known for its grim prog-nosis, with untreated life expectancy being only a matter of months after the diagnosis. The difficulty in making a diagnosis early is one of the main contributing factors to the poor prognosis. Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) had long been used as a surveillance tool, but suboptimal specificity and sensitivity has prompted liver societies to abandon the rec-ommendation for its universal use, even in combination with ultrasonography. Most studies have shown no obvi-ous correlation between serum AFP level and HCC tumor size, stage, or survival post-diagnosis. However, some stud-ies concluded that a gradual rise or persistent elevation in AFP were positive predictors for tumor development. Other studies reported a fall in AFP followed by a rise in patients with HCC as well as persistently rising AFP levels without development of HCC on follow up. Our calculation of the sensitivity and specificity of persistently rising AFP for HCC were both low, at 60％ and 35.8％, respectively, indicating that the presence of persistently rising AFP per se did not offer diagnostic benefit. In addition, our calculated mean slopes of persistently rising AFP levels in HCC and non-HCC patients were numerically very different, but the difference was not statistically significant. We conclude that the pub-lished data do not support a role for rising AFP levels per se in the diagnosis of HCC.
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
