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CASE REPORT article

Front. Med.
Sec. Hepatobiliary Diseases
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2024.1470046
This article is part of the Research Topic Case Reports in Hepatobiliary Diseases View all 8 articles

Elevated Serum CA 19-9 Level Mimicking Pancreaticobiliary Carcinoma from a Hepatic Abscess: Case Report and Literature Review

Provisionally accepted
Shaurya Dhingra Shaurya Dhingra 1Puneet Raman Puneet Raman 1*Taylor Ramsaroop Taylor Ramsaroop 1Isaiah Harrison Isaiah Harrison 1Tova Bergsten Tova Bergsten 1Erin Nusbaum Erin Nusbaum 1*Lawrence E Feldman Lawrence E Feldman 1,2*
  • 1 Department of Medicine, University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, United States
  • 2 Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, United States Department of Veterans Affairs, Chicago, Illinois, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Serum levels of the tumor marker CA 19-9 are widely utilized in the diagnosis and monitoring pancreatic and biliary malignancies. However, serum levels of CA 19-9 have also been reportedly elevated in non-malignant conditions. Here, we present the rare case of a 65year-old woman with a history of gallbladder malignancy who was found to have a new hepatic lesion on surveillance CT with an associated elevation in CA 19-9 to 5866 U/mL. Drainage of the lesion and treatment with antibiotics resulted in a rapid decline in CA 19-9 levels, indicating that the elevation in CA 19-9 was due to a benign hepatic lesion. We review eight similar reported cases of CA 19-9 elevations due to benign hepatic abscesses, thereby highlighting a need to interpret the tumor marker with caution.

    Keywords: "CA 19-9", "Tumor Marker", "Hepatic Abscess", Hepatobiliary, Hepatology

    Received: 24 Jul 2024; Accepted: 20 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Dhingra, Raman, Ramsaroop, Harrison, Bergsten, Nusbaum and Feldman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Puneet Raman, Department of Medicine, University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, United States
    Erin Nusbaum, Department of Medicine, University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, United States
    Lawrence E Feldman, Department of Medicine, University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, United States

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