Abstract
A series of consecutive unselected patients with primary breast carcinoma and their age-matched controls were studied for serum CEA in relation to clinical findings. Raised CEA was found in a similar frequency in patients with primary breast cancer (pre- and postoperative) and in the control women: 16%, 11% and 11%, respectively, exceeded the selected upper limit of the reference range (13 ng/ml) with a double-antibody radioimmunoassay. In the breast-cancer patients, however, 48% of the raised CEA levels exceeded 16 ng/ml, compared with only 20% in the controls. Significant correlations (r approximately 0.3) were found between CEA levels and tumour size, TNM classification and a combined clinical and histopathological classification. A high frequency of raised CEA values in the advanced breast-cancer patients was the essential contribution to these positive correlations. A correlation coefficient of 0.6 was found between pre- and postoperative CEA values. The frequency of smoking and/or chronic disease was unexpectedly high in patients as well as in controls with high CEA.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 24 print issues and online access
$259.00 per year
only $10.79 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rimsten, Å., Adami, H., Wahren, B. et al. Carcinoembryonic antigen in serum of unselected breast-cancer patients and of non-hospitalized controls. Br J Cancer 39, 109–115 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1038/bjc.1979.20
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/bjc.1979.20
This article is cited by
-
Prospective assessment of the role of five tumour markers in breast cancer
Cancer Immunology Immunotherapy (1991)