Tumor vessel depiction with contrast-enhanced endoscopic ultrasonography predicts efficacy of chemotherapy in pancreatic cancer.

OBJECTIVES

Contrast-enhanced endoscopic ultrasonography (CE-EUS) is a new imaging modality for pancreatic lesions. The aim of this study was to evaluate if CE-EUS is useful for predicting treatment efficacy before pancreatic cancer chemotherapy by assessing intratumoral vessel flow.

METHODS

Thirty-nine patients with unresectable advanced pancreatic cancer underwent CE-EUS before chemotherapy. The patients were divided into 2 groups according to the intratumoral vessel flow observed with CE-EUS: vessel sign-positive and vessel sign-negative groups. Patient prognosis was investigated according to presence or absence of the vessel sign.

RESULTS

Two patients were excluded due to poor visualization of CE-EUS images; therefore, 37 patients were analyzed. Contrast-enhanced EUS revealed positive vessel sign in 20 patients, whereas it revealed negative vessel sign in 17 patients. Both progression-free survival and overall survival were significantly longer in the positive- versus negative vessel sign groups (P = 0.037 and P = 0.027, respectively). Multivariate analysis demonstrated that the positive vessel sign was an independent factor associated with longer overall survival (hazard ratio, 0.22; 95% confidence interval, 0.08-0.53).

CONCLUSIONS

Evaluation of intratumoral vessel flow by CE-EUS could be useful for predicting efficacy of chemotherapy in patients with pancreatic cancer. Contrast-enhanced EUS could be used before chemotherapy for inoperable pancreatic cancer.