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Background: Recently, the predictive usefulness of variations in cancer antigen CA15-3 for breast cancer (BC) has received much attention.Objective: This study aimed to assess the relationship between the kinetics of the serum level of CA15-3 and the outcome of patients with non-metastatic BC.Patients and methods: This prospective single center trial was carried out in Medical Oncology Department, South Egypt Cancer Institute (SECI), Assiut University, on 75 female patients with non-metastatic BC patients.The serum level of CA15-3 was evaluated via Roche Elecsys at three time points (pre-operative, post-operative, and after one year of follow up).Results: Serum CA15-3 concentration showed a significant reduction from pre-to post-operative time, from pre-to after one year of follow up and from post-operative time to after one year of follow up (P< 0.001).No Significant relation was observed between CA15-3 and the clinic-pathological data of the studied non-metastatic BC patients.Also, CA15-3 level had no role in the survival outcome of the studied cases. Conclusion:The finding of the current study indicated that it is not necessary to mutually examine the pre-and postoperative serum level CA15-3 to evaluate its role as this will not add much more clinical benefit, and that we culd examine the pre-operative serum CA15-3 concentration to avoid wasting time, effort and money.
Abdelfattah et al. (Mon,) studied this question.