Clinical study on preoperative endoscopic ultrasonography staging and relationship with the expression of PTEN in gastric carcinoma

Abstract

Objective To evaluate endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS) in preoperative staging of gastric carcinoma,and to study the molecular biologic basis of its ultrasonic manifestation.Methods Sev-enty-four patients with gastric carcinoma were referred to EUS and staged preoperatively.The staging esults of EUS were compared with the histopathological staging and the expression of PTEN.Results The verall accuracy rate of EUS for determination of T staging was 82.4%(61/74),for T1,T2,T3 and T4 were 100.0%,72.7％,85.O％ and 78.9％,respectively.For N staging,EUS had the overall accuracy rate of 74.3%(55/74),with sensitivity and specificity of 80.8％ and 59.1％,respectively.The preoperative EUS for T and N staging of gastric carcinoma was of inverse correlation with the expression of PTEN.Conclusions EUS is an accurate staging modality in determining carcinoma invasive depth and lymph node involved,with a few exceptions of overstaging and understaging.However,EUS criteria to differentiate benign from malignant nodes still need to be further defined by future studies.The preoperative EUS for T and N staging could well display the molecular pathologic basis of gastric carcinoma. Key words: Stomach neoplasms; Endosonography; Neoplasm staging; Pathology,surgical