CEA and CA 19-9 In Malignant Pleural Ef-fusions

This study was performed in consecutive 89 pa-tients with pleural effusions and in 25 healthy in-dividuals chosen as a control group. The patients were separated in two groups according to their ae-tiologies: malignant pleural effisions and benign pleural effusions. In 35 cases, the cause of pleural effusions was malignancy and in other 54 cases there were benign diseases. The levels of CEA and CA 19-9 were measured in serum and pleural fluid of all patients and in sera of control group. We also investigated the relationship between serum and ple-ural fluid CEA and CA 19-9 concentrations. Mean serum and pleural fluid CEA concentrations was higher in malignant pleural effusions than in benign pleural effusions than in benign pleural effusions and healthy groups (p<0.01 and p<0.001). The lev-els of CA 19-9 in pleural fluid was higher in ma-lignant pleural effusions than in benign elisions (p<0.005). In conclusion, this study demonstrated that CEA and CA 19-9 pleural fluid levels might he useful in differential diagnosis of malignant pleural