Clinical experience with radiolabelled monoclonal antibodies in the detection of colorectal and ovarian carcinoma recurrence and review of the literature

A retrospective study was carried out to determine the diagnostic value of OncoScint CR/OV immunoscintigraphy in assessing patients with suspected rec urrence of carcinoma of the colon and ovary. The scintigraphic results of 3 1 patients were compared with surgical and histopathological findings, conv entional radiological examinations and clinical disease outcome over an ave rage 3-year follow-up. Detected lesions were divided by location into hepat ic or extrahepatic and the latter group was classified as local recurrence at the resection site, pelvic or abdominal regional lymph node involvement and distant metastatic disease. The combined sensitivity and accuracy of im munoscintigraphy in the detection of extrahepatic disease was significantly higher than that of cross-sectional radiological imaging (87% and 83% vs 4 4% and 53% respectively) with equal specificity of 74%. Scintigraphy identi fied 14 (36%) of 39 extrahepatic malignant lesions not diagnosed by convent ional radiological techniques and influenced therapeutic planning in 8 (26% ) of 31 patients studied. In the liver, conventional imaging had a signific antly higher detection rate than immunoscintigraphy (sensitivity 93% vs 28% ). In conclusion, these results show that OncoScint scintigraphy is a sensi tive method for the detection of local recurrence and extrahepatic metastas es in colorectal and ovarian carcinoma and has an important role in the the rapeutic decision-making process. ((C) 1999 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins).