for eMaxHealthPancreatic Cancer
Researchers has found further evidence supporting the ability of a protein to predict how well a patient with advanced pancreatic cancer will do after surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.
The levels of the protein CA 19-9 in the blood can be used to determine the need for further therapy, they say.
Adam Berger, M.D., assistant professor of surgery at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, and his co-workers examined CA 19-9 levels and the survival of 385 patients with advanced pancreatic cancer who were treated with surgery and subsequent chemotherapy and radiation. They found that those patients whose post-operative CA 19-9 level exceeded 180 U/ml did much worse than those with lower levels.
In fact, at least half of those whose CA 19-9 level was higher than 180 U/ml lived for approximately nine months, while half of those whose levels were 180 or below lived more than twice as long, about 21 months. After three years, about 30 percent of those with levels 180 or under were still alive, while virtually none of the patients with levels above 180 remained alive. He reports his team's findings at the semi-annual meeting of the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) in Philadelphia.
"We think that it is a very sensitive predictor of response to chemotherapy and radiation after surgery," says Dr. Berger.
The main goal of the multicenter trial was to compare pancreatic cancer surgery patients who received two different types of chemotherapy
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