Assessment of resectability of pancreatic carcinoma by endoscopic ultrasonography

Objective To discover the value of endoscopi c ultrasonography (EUS) in predicting the resectability of pancreatic carcinoma.Methods Thirty-eight consecutive patients were prospectively i nvestigated using EUS to determine the tumor resectability. Two specialists eval uated the EUS findings in each of the patients prospectively. All patients were explored and their resectability noted. In the meantime, we compared the accurac y of EUS diagnosis with that of CT, MRI and sonography respectively.Results Ten out of 38 cases with pancreatic carcinoma were cons idered to be resectable by EUS with a positive predictive value of 80 0% in com parison with surgical findings. EUS also had high correlation with surgical resu lts in assessing un-resectability of pancreatic carcinoma, the negative predic tive value is 96 4%. There was 1 false negative and 2 false-positive assessmen ts (sensitivity, 88 9% and specificity, 93 1%). The accuracy of EUS was the hi ghest. The diagnostic accuracy of EUS, CT, MRI and sonography were 97 4%, 94 6 %, 89 5% and 73 7% respectively.Conclusion It is an effective method to use endoscopic ultrason ography in predicting the resectability of pancreatic carcinoma before operation .