What is the role of EUS in gastric cancer staging?
Treatment for gastric cancer is stage dependent with endoscopic mucosal resection and submucosal dissection an option for T1N0 cancers and neoadjuvant treatment administered for T3/T4 and nodal positive cancers. Therefore accurate staging is important. If no distant metastatic disease is visible on computed tomography (CT) or positron emission tomography scan, EUS is the next step for locoregional staging. Overall EUS sensitivity and specificity for T staging are 86% and 91%, respectively. For N staging, EUS sensitivity and specificity are 69% and 84%. CT and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) appear comparable to EUS for T and N staging.