There is usually no doubt where the patient’s primary tumor is
located. Is it in the lung, breast, stomach, kidneys or colon?
Tumor marker testing offers considerable help in finding the
primary tumor.

Example

A Norwegian, female patient arrived at Humlegaarden in Nov.
1999. At the local hospital in Norway as well as at the Norwegian
radium hospital in Oslo she was diagnosed: Not small cell lung
cancer. They could-n’t offer her any treatment in Norway, so
she came to us. She was in a serious state, because the tumor
had begun pressing her trachea, making it it hard to breath.

We routinely measure the tumor marker NSE (neuron specific
enolase) - which is a specific tumor marker for small cell lung
cancer - on our lung cancer patients. Normally a NSE value is
less than 12.5, but this patient had 84. Immediately we phoned
the tumor marker ward at Statens Serumsinstitut in Copenhagen
and asked the chief of staff if 84 was a high enough figure to
state with certainty that the patient had small cell lung cancer.
After having consulted his books, he could answer:

“Absolutely yes”. We then contacted the chief M.D. of the
oncological ward at the local hospital in Norway, and we
informed him of the situation. ”We will absolutely not change
our diagnosis based on tumor markers”, he told us, “and
consequently we will not give her chemotherapy.” After this
we contacted the Norwegian radium hospital where the patient
also had been sent. Here they listened and informed us that
they would contact us the next day, when they had had a
chance to look at the tissue sample once more. The next
morning we were informed that they agreed with us:
The patient had small cell lung cancer. The Norwegian radium
hospital consequently wrote the local hospital and told them
which chemotherapy the patient was going to have. She was
treated, and late January 2000 the patient – beaming with joy –
informed us by phone that the cancer had disappeared using
the treatment.

Here you can see the diagnostic importance of tumor markers,
and at Humlegaarden we have seen many similar cases.