CancerCompass message board discussion started by googie on 7/7/2008 http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,25786,0.htm Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://backend.userland.com/rss RSS.NET: http://www.rssdotnet.com/ Hi,my husband just had a scan because his cea level keeps rising. His cancer is stage 4 with mets in the liver and the cea had been going down for 9 months. The last 4 chemo sessions the level has continued to go up. The doctor said that since the scan shows that the lessions in the liver have continued to shrink and that there it has not spread any where else that we will need to use another marker to follow the progress.Has this happened to anyone else? We are so relieved to hear the good news about the scan but still worried about the cea level.thanks Googie googie Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT  On 7/7/2008 googie wrote:Hi,my husband just had a scan because his cea level keeps rising. His cancer is stage 4 with mets in the liver and the cea had been going down for 9 months. The last 4 chemo sessions the level has continued to go up. The doctor said that since the scan shows that the lessions in the liver have continued to shrink and that there it has not spread any where else that we will need to use another marker to follow the progress.Has this happened to anyone else? We are so relieved to hear the good news about the scan but still worried about the cea level.thanks GoogieGoogie,My wife has Colon Cancer, stage IV (liver mets). As far as I know, scan only show bigger size tumors, but it does not show small tumors. In my case, my wife also has small size peritoneal tumors and one small tumor attached to her bladder, but the scan only showed the one on the bladder. They were only able to see the peritoneal tumors when they went inside.We expect to perform a PET scan soon, and even then, the oncologist told us we may not be able to see 100% of these small tumors.Also, our oncologist has always said to us that CEA is very important, but not everything.My suggestion would be ask your dr to perform a better scan (Pet scan) in order to minimize the risk of having "hidden tumors".Hibert Hibert Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT thank you for your insight. I only hope that the scan is correct. My husband also has crohn's disease and I hope that his cea level is off because of the med's that he has to take for that/ googie Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT