Comparative Assessment of Two Strategies for Interpreting Tumor Markers in Ascitic Effusions.

Background/aim: There are two strategies for the interpretation of tumor markers (TM) in fluid effusions: i) high cut-off and ii) fluid/serum ratio (F/S) and low cut-off. The objective of this study is to compare these two strategies and to determine whether diagnostic accuracy improves by the identification of possible false positives using Adenosine deaminase (ADA), C reactive protein (CRP) and % of polymorphonuclear cells (%PN).

Patients And Methods: We studied 157 ascitic fluids, 74 of which were malignant.