Luigi Frigerio

Br. J. Cancer 2000 Feb; 82 (3) : 616-20
( In coll. Con P.Magnani, F.Fazio, C.Grana, S.Pecorelli, G.Mangili, N.Colombo, CD.Mariani, G.Paganelli )
Summary: 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. Thirty patients were intravenously injected with biotinylated monoclonal antibodies Mov18 and B72,3, followed by avidin-streptavidin injection and finally underwent surgical re-exploration 3-4 days after immunoscintigraphy; the presence of tumor 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 were 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 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.