Abstract: Objective: To investigate the values of survivin and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) for differen -tially diagnosing ascites and the clinical significance of the combined detection of the tumor markers. Methods:A total of 62 ascites samples were collected, with benign ascites in 22cases and malignant ascites in 40. The levels of survivin and VEGF were determined using ELISA. Results: The survivin and VEGF levels were significantly higher in the malignant asci-tes than in the benign ascites (P<0.01). When compared across groups, the survivin and VEGF levels were significantly higher in the malignant ascites of the group with ovarian carcinoma compared to the groups with gastric carcinoma, pancre-atic carcinoma or liver cancer ( P<0.05). The sensitivity, specificity and diagnostic accordance rate of survivin in diagnosis of malignant ascites were respectively 80%,86.4% and 82.3%, those of VEGF were 67.5%,86.4%, and74.2%, and those of survivin and VEGF in the combined detection were 90%,77.3% and 85.5%. The expression of survivin closely correlated to that of VEGF ( P<0.01). Conclusions: The detection of the survivin and VEGF levels in ascites can contribute to distinguish benign ascites from malignant ascites. This, combined with histogenesis detection, can significantly raise the sensitivity in the diagnosis of ascites.