Noninvasive assesment in differentiating benign and malign pancreatic lesions with endosonographic elastography score and strain ratio

Abstract

Background: We aimed to evaluate the diagnostic capability of endoscopic ultrasound elastography (EUS-EG) and strain ratio (SR) for differentiating benign pancreatic lesions from the malign lesions Material and Method: We retrospectively evaluated well collected data of patients who undergone EUS-EG in a single centre during the period of January 2016-June 2019. Patients who had pancreatic disorders were further evaluated for the study. The final diagnosis of solid pancreatic lesions (SPL) was made by histopathologic examination. Control group consisted of patients with chronic pancreatitis (CP) who diagnosed according to Rosemont criteria. Elastography was evaluated by a qualitative (elastography scores) and a quantitative method SR. Results: A total of 66 patients (42 (63.6%)female/42 (63.6%)male) with mean age of 58.88±15.32 (19- 80) were included in the study. Thirty-eight patients had SLP, remain 28 patients were CP. In SPL group, 32 (84.2%) had adenocarcinomas and 6 (15.8%) had neuroendocrine tumors. Among 28 patients with benign pancreatic lessions, 23 (82.1%) had CP while five (17.9%) had autoimmune pancreatitis. Median SR values were significantly higher in patients with SPL than those with CP (44.0 (10.0-110.0) vs 7.0 (2.6-14.6), p<0.001). Elasticity scores were also significantly different between patients with SLP and CP (p<0.001). Elasticity scores were significantly different between adenocarcinomas and CP (p<0.001). A 14 cut-off value of SR had 97% sensitive and 100% specificity for SPL and receiver-operating characteristic curves showed an area under the curve of 0.99.6. Likelihood Ratio test revealed that SR appears as the best parameter in discrimination of lesion type either as benign or malignant (X2 = 54.031, p<0.001). Conclusion: Our study suggested that EUS-elastography and SR scores are highly effective in differentiating malign-benign pancreatitis lesions