[The simultaneous evaluation of serum NSE as a tumor marker in lung cancer compared with serum CEA--high sensitivity and specificity defined in the TP-FP curve].

Serum NSE and serum CEA levels were simultaneously examined in 40 patients with primary lung cancer and in 70 other patients without cancer, including 45 young healthy subjects, 13 cases of chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD), and 12 cases of pulmonary tuberculosis. The primary lung cancers consisted of 13 small cell carcinomas, 12 adenocarcinomas, 11 epidermoid carcinomas, 3 large cell carcinomas, and 1 unclassified. The mean serum NSE level in the 40 primary lung cancer cases was 18.4 +/- 65.7 ng/ml, the levels for small cell carcinomas, adenocarcinomas, epidermoid carcinomas, and large cell carcinomas being 46.8 +/- 46.7 ng/ml, 3.8 +/- 1.0 ng/ml, 4.6 +/- 2.8 ng/ml and 3.6 +/- 0.3 ng/ml, respectively. The levels in young healthy subjects, COPD cases, and pulmonary tuberculosis cases were 3.0 +/- 0.59 ng/ml, 3.2 +/- 0.51 ng/ml and 5.0 +/- 1.5 ng/ml, respectively. In order to evaluate the efficacy of NSE as a tumor marker, we calculated the true positive ratios and false positive ratios for serum NSE, as on indicator of sensitivity and specificity. It was concluded that serum NSE is an excellent new tumor marker compared with CEA, especially for small cell carcinomas.