Hydro-dynamic CT preoperative staging of gastric cancer: correlation with pathological findings. A prospective study of 107 cases

The aim of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of dynamic CT in the preoperative staging of gastric cancer. One hundred seven patients affected cancer diagnosed by endoscopic biopsy were prospectively staged by dynamic CT prior to tumor resection. After an oral intake of 400-600 ml of tap water and an intravenous infusion of a hypotonic agent, 200 ml of non-ionic contrast agent were administered by power injector using a biphasic technique. The CT findings were prospectively analyzed and correlated with the pathological findings at surgery. The accuracy of dynamic CT for tumor detection was 80 and 99 % in early and advanced gastric cancer, respectively, with overall detection rate of 96 % (103 of 107). Three early (pT1) and one advanced (pT2) cancers were undetected. Tumor stage as determined by dynamic CT agreed with pathological findings in 83 of 107 patients with an overall accuracy of 78 %. The accuracy of CT in detecting increasing degrees of depth of tumor invasion when compared with pathological TNM staging was 20 % (3 of 15) and 87 % (80 of 92) in early and advanced cancer, respectively. The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of CT in the preoperative staging (pT3-pT4 vs pT1-pT2) was 93, 90, and 91.6 %, respectively. The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of CT in assessing metastasis to regional lymph nodes was 97.2, 65.7, and 87 %, respectively. Computed tomography correctly staged liver metastases of 105 of 107 patients with an overall sensitivity of 87.5 % and specificity of 99 %. The sensitivity of peritoneal involvement was 30 % when ascites or peritoneal nodules were absent. Our findings show that dynamic CT can play a role in the preoperative definition of gastric cancer stage. The results can be used to optimize the therapeutic strategy for each individual patient prior to surgery, thus avoiding unnecessary intervention and allowing careful planning of extended surgery in eligible patients.