title: Diagnosis of persistent ovarian carcinoma with three-step immunoscintigraphy.
abstract: The diagnosis of recurrent ovarian carcinoma is usually determined at surgical re-exploration since the main non-invasive diagnostic tests have low accuracy. It would be desirable to have a high accuracy non-invasive diagnostic procedure. With this aim, we have assessed the utility of three-step immunoscintigraphy. Thirty patients were intravenously injected with biotinylated monoclonal antibodies MOv18 and B72.3, followed by avidin-streptavidin injection and finally by 111In-biotin. Tumour recurrences were imaged 2 h post radioactivity injection. All patients underwent surgical re-exploration 3-4 days after immunoscintigraphy; the presence of tumour in the area of immunoscintigraphic uptake was evaluated in the biopsied material. Twenty-one patients studied were true-positive, five were true-negative, four were false-positive and none was false-negative. The diagnostic accuracy, positive predictive value and negative predictive value were 87%, 84% and 100% respectively. If these findings are confirmed in a larger number of patients, we expect immunoscintigraphy to be introduced as a cost-effective procedure in the follow-up of patients who have received surgery for ovarian carcinoma, since it promises to reliably identify patients who do not require surgical re-exploration, and guide biopsies when they are indicated.
authors.affiliation: INB-CNR, Institute H. S. Raffaele, University of Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Magnani
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Fazio
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Grana
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Songini
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Frigerio
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pecorelli
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Mangili
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Colombo
authors.forename: C D
authors.initials: CD
authors.lastname: Mariani
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Paganelli
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D018394:CA-125 Antigen / Q000097:blood; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D010051:Ovarian Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000473:pathology; D016719:Radioimmunodetection / Q000379:methods*; D012008:Recurrence
chemical_list: D018394:CA-125 Antigen