Clinical significance of statistical discrimination employing serum TA-4, TPA, and CEA levels in uterine cervical cancer.

The serum levels of TA-4, TPA, and CEA were measured simultaneously in 52 patients with uterine cervical cancer and 99 healthy females. The findings were examined statistically by discriminant analysis method. The diagnostic usefulness of discriminant analysis employing the serum values for these three tumor markers was studied for uterine cervical cancer and compared with the diagnostic efficacy using each tumor marker alone. The following results were obtained: In the uterine cervical cancer patients, the frequencies of cases with the elevated serum levels were 55.8% for TA-4, 46.2% for TPA, and 36.5% for CEA. The functional formula, Z = 1.8395 log TA-4 + 3.5314 log TPA + 1.0130 log CEA-7.7352, was obtained by the stepwise discriminant analysis method. With the values obtained from this formula, 71.2% of patients with uterine cervical cancer were correctly classified in the uterine cervical cancer group. In the uterine cervical cancer patients, the values obtained from this formula increased according to the progression of the clinical stage and reflected the disappearance or persistence of tumor lesions after several therapies. From the above results, it was concluded that the discriminant analysis employing the serum values for three tumor markers was extremely useful in determining complete remission of uterine cervical cancers after several therapies, as well as for early diagnosis of the recurrences in uterine cervical cancer which were not detected by the cytologic smear examinations, compared with the measurement for each tumor marker alone. This discriminant analysis, however, was less effective for early diagnosis of uterine cervical cancer than the cervical cytologic smear test.