Role of endoscopic ultrasonography in the staging of rectal cancer - A retrospective study on 63 patients

We evaluated retrospectively the accuracy of endoscopic ultrasonography (EU S) in the preoperative staging of 63 patients with rectal cancer who were h ospitalized and underwent surgery at our institution from January 1994 to D ecember 1997. These patients, 39 men and 24 women with a mean age of 60 yea rs, underwent preoperative EUS, which was performed in all cases using an e cho-colonoscope Olympus CF UM 20, with a 7.5 MHz radial scanner. Ten patien ts did not undergo surgery and, therefore, were excluded from the analysis. EUS showed an overall accuracy of 81% for the T stage (including nontraver sable stenotic tumors) and of 70% for the N stage. The accuracy of EUS for the T stage increased from 81 to 90% when we excluded those cases with nont raversable stenotic cancers from the analysis. Five tumors (9.4%) were unde rstaged, while another five cases (9.4%) were overstaged. Finally, EUS was highly accurate (81%) in differentiating T1 from T2-4 tumors. In conclusion , our data shows that EUS is very accurate in the locoregional staging of r ectal cancer and confirms the role of this imaging technique in the preoper ative staging of patients with rectal cancer.