Assessment of alpha-fetoprotein clinical performances in the diagnosis of the hepatocellular carcinoma at Sominé DOLO hospital of Mopti

Abstract

Serum AFP as a poor clinical performance values especially when it comes to deal with the early and AFP-negative diagnostic of HCC. The aim of this work was to assess the contribution of AFP in the diagnosis of HCC. : A total of 95 subjects was enrolled a prospective observational study by consecutive enrolment and divided in two groups. The first group was made up with subjects in whom the diagnosis of HCC had been retained while the second was the control group which was free of HCC. AFP levels were performed by electrochemiluminescence immunoassay on the cobas e411. Data were captured in Excel and analyzed by Ri386 version 4.1.2 binary for macOS 10.13. The Log of median of AFP in HCC subjects was significantly greater than in non HCC subjects 6.91 ng/mL versus 1.43 ng/mL, Wilcoxon < 0.001. At the cut-off of 200 ng/mL, the clinical performances showed an acceptable sensitivity 97.1% CI 95% [93.7 – 100] but a poor specificity 73,8% CI 95% [64.9 – 82.6] and out of the 34 cases of HCC, one case (2.9%) was AFP-negative HCC. our data show an acceptable sensitivity but a weak specificity of AFP as a biomarker for HCC at cut-off 200 ng/mL. This suggests that AFP should be used with other biomarkers mainly for the early and AFP-negative HCC diagnosis.