Endoscopic Ultrasound in the Clinical Staging and Management of Pancreatic Cancer: Its Impact on Cost of Treatment

Abstract

Defining this patient population helps to reduce direct medical care costs in pancreatic cancer. However, prospective data are lacking in this regard and will need to be addressed in the future. When palliative care is the goal for patients, EUS-guided fine-needle injection techniques can be used for celiac neurolysis and possibly in the future use of antitumor agents.

Improved Differentiation of Pancreatic Tumors Using Contrast-Enhanced Endoscopic Ultrasound

“…25,26 Endoscopic ultrasound also is widely accepted for staging purposes in patients with ductal adenocarcinoma of the pancreas to determine vascular infiltration. [27][28][29][30] It is also of great value for localizing neuroendocrine pancreatic tumors. 31 Endoscopic conventional B-mode ultrasound in combination with contrast-enhanced endoscopic Doppler ultrasound (CE-EDUS) reveals not only the grade of vascularization of a pancreatic lesion but also parenchymal criteria and ductal criteria and therefore might be helpful in the differentiation of solid pancreatic tumors.…”

Cholangioscopy and pancreatoscopy (with videos)

“…4,19 However, when associated with a pancreatic mass, the yield of EUS-guided FNA is significantly higher. [20][21][22][23] Cholangiopancreatoscopy was developed to address the previously mentioned limitations by enabling direct visualization of the pancreatobiliary ducts. Unfortunately, although this has been available for more than 3 decades now, the role of this technology remains very limited.…”

Extrapulmonary Tuberculosis (TB) Diagnosed With the Aid of Endoscopic Ultrasound–Guided Lymph Node Biopsy

“…The sandwich refers to the appearance of mesenteric fat and tubular structures as the sandwich filling and the homogeneous soft tissue masses as the 2 halves of a sandwich bun on crosssectional imaging. 20,21 Endoscopic US is largely harnessed to distinguish malignant nodes but also is used in diagnosing TB. 1).…”