CROSS-SECTIONAL IMAGING OF THE UPPER GASTROINTESTINAL-TRACT

The initial diagnosis of oesophageal and gastric malignancy was tradit ionally made by radiologists using barium examinations. The increasing availability of endoscopy now means that most tumours are diagnosed b y clinicians and the role of radiology has changed to staging the dise ase prior to surgery. Studies from the early 1980s suggested that comp uted tomography (CT) could be an accurate method of assessing gastric tumours.([1,2]) Work from the late 1980s([3]) however found CT to be q uite inaccurate with up to 47 % of patients being incorrectly staged i n one trial. The introduction of helical CT scanning has resulted in c onsiderable improvement in evaluating the primary tumour and the prese nce of nodal and metastatic spread. CT now offers accurate staging of oesophageal and gastric carcinomas and is the mainstay of cross sectio nal imaging of the upper gastrointestinal tract with magnetic resonanc e imaging (MRT) and endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) having a complimentary role in certain specific aspects.