Investigating the diagnostic value of tumor markers compared to ultrasound in the diagnosis of ovarian tumors

Aims: Ovarian cancer has the worst prognosis among female genital tract malignancies, but if detected in the early stages, it is one of the most treatable malignancies. The aim of this study was to investigate the diagnostic value of tumor markers compared to ultrasound in the diagnosis of ovarian tumors. Materials and methods: In this cross-sectional-analytical study, 210 women referred to Yasuj women's clinic in Iran from 2017 to 2021 who were candidates for ovarian surgery participated. The method of data collection was patients interviewing and using the information available in the file. Demographic information, disease symptoms, prevention method, type of surgery, serum tumor markers, ultrasound findings, intraoperative findings, and pathology results were collected from the patients' files and recorded in a form. The data was analyzed using SPSS version 22 software. Findings: The examination of ovarian masses from the point of view of pathology showed that the most common histological pattern was ovarian epithelial masses with a frequency of 64.28%, of which 72.18% were larger than 10 cm in ultrasound. There is a significant relationship between the serum level of two tumor markers CA125 and HE4 in ovarian cancer (P=0.0001), but no relationship was observed in terms of surgical stage and differentiation grade of ovarian cancer. The sensitivity of ultrasound was 78.9% and the sensitivity and specificity of HE4 tumor marker were reported as 85.4% and 81.7%, respectively and the lowest characteristic was related to the Tomer marker CA125(59.3%). Conclusion: Ultrasound has relatively high sensitivity for detecting ovarian tumors, but CA125 with relatively high sensitivity and moderate specificity and HE4 with high specificity and high sensitivity as two tumor markers are not suitable for screening these tumors alone and should be performed together with ultrasound. to have a better predictive role in the prognosis and response to the treatment of ovarian masses.