Differential diagnosis of focal pancreatic masses by semiquantitative EUS elastography: between strain ratios and strain histograms

Abstract

We have read with great interest the original article published by Dawwas et al.1 They included in their study a total of 104 patients with focal pancreatic masses, with 111 EUS elastography procedures based on several (3) measurements of the strain ratio, which yielded an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for the diagnosis of pancreatic malignancy of 0.69, lower than reported in other articles. Consequently, the authors concluded that the diagnostic utility of EUS elastography is modest for the differential diagnosis of focal pancreatic masses, although it could add supplementary information about the pancreatic lesions.