Hydro-MDCT for Gastric Adenocarcinoma Staging. A Comparative Study With Surgical and Histopathological Findings for Selecting Patients for Echo-endoscopy.

BACKGROUND/AIM: In local staging of gastric adenocarcinoma CT is the modality of choice. Less frequently used in a few selected patients is echo-endoscopy. Aim of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of hydro-multidetector-computed tomography (hydro-MDCT) in the evaluation of gastric adenocarcinomas with subsequent surgical and histopathological correlation to select cases for echo-endoscopy.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

A total of 65 patients with gastric adenocarcinomas, diagnosed by endoscopy and biopsy, underwent contrast-enhanced hydro-MDCT with subsequent tumor, nodes, metastases (TNM) classification. The distension of the gastric lumen was obtained after the oral administration of 500 ml of water.

RESULTS

Hydro-MDCT always detected gastric cancer and in 49/65 patients the assessment of T-parameter was identical to the histopathological results (accuracy: 75%). We found overstaging in 12 and understaging in 4 cases. N-parameter with MDCT was in agreement with histo-pathology in 69%of patients; in metastatic disease hydro-MDCT had an accuracy of 99%. Hydro-MDCT has proven to be a reliable diagnostic technique in evaluating gastric cancer T3-T4 stages in comparison to T1 and T2: in defining T2-stage we found the highest number of errors (37%).

CONCLUSION

Hydro-MDCT is a reliable technique in the preoperative staging of gastric adenocarcinoma. Echo-endoscopy could be particularly useful in doubtful cases to evaluate the muscularis propria infiltration (T2 vs. T3) and characterize the peri-gastric lymph nodes.