What Is A CA 19-9 Blood Test?
Small amounts of CA 19-9 can be found in the blood of healthy people. For example, pancreatic cancer is often a sign of having a lot of CA 19-9 in your body. But high levels can sometimes signify other types of cancer or noncancerous diseases like cirrhosis or gallstones.
Because high levels of CA 19-9 can mean different things, the test is not used to screen for or diagnose cancer on its own. Instead, it can help you track how your cancer is getting worse and how well your treatment works.
What Is A CA 19-9 Blood Test?
- Monitor pancreatic cancer and how the cancer is being treated. When cancer spreads, CA 19-9 levels often go up, and when tumors get smaller, they go down.
- Check to see if cancer came back after treatment.
Why Do I Need A CA 19-9 Test?
If you have pancreatic cancer or another type of cancer linked to high levels of CA 19-9, you may need a CA 19-9 blood test. Some of these cancers are the cancer of the bile duct, colon cancer, and stomach cancer.
Your doctor may test you regularly to see if your cancer treatment works. After your treatment is done, you may also be checked to see if cancer has returned.
What Happens In A CA 19-9 Blood Test?
A small needle will be used to take a blood sample from a vein in your arm. After the needle is put in, a small amount of blood will be put into a test tube or vial. The needle might hurt a little when it goes in or comes out. However, this takes less than five minutes most of the time.
What do the results Suggest?
You may be tested more than once during your treatment for pancreatic cancer or another type of cancer. When tests are done over and over, your results may show:
- The amount of CA 19-9 in your body is going up. This could mean that your tumor is getting bigger or that your treatment isn’t helping.
- The amount of CA 19-9 in your body is going down. This could mean that your tumor is getting smaller and that the treatment is working.
- The amount of CA 19-9 in your body has not gone up or down. This could mean your illness is staying the same.
- Your levels of CA 19-9 went down, but then they went up again. This could mean that cancer came back after you were treated for it.
If you don’t have cancer, but your test results show that your CA 19-9 level is higher than normal, it could identify one of the following noncancerous diseases:
- Pancreatitis
- Liver disease
- A blocked bile duct
- Cystic fibrosis
AWAMI LAB, GUJRAT, TO DELIVER PREMIUM LAB SERVICES
Awami Lab is proud to offer the best health care services in Gujrat. We offer the best and most valuable lab services for the CA 19-9 test. Technicians and phlebotomists on our team are trained to do every test in a safe and clean environment. As soon as the sample is sent to the lab for testing, we send out authentic test reports.
