The use of intraoperative ultrasound for diagnosis and stadiation in pancreatic head neoformations

The intraoperative staging of the pancreatic cancer is important to make a proper treatment. For this reason the intraoperative echography is playing an important role in the right treatment choice. The intraoperative echography, that can be performed with an open or laparoscopic probe, is used to confirm the preoperative diagnosis and assess the pancreatic cancer resecability. The intraoperative echography (IOUS) or laparoscopic intraoperative echography (LIOUS) are useful to identify the patients with a non resecable cancer and perform a faster neoadjuvant treatment. The LIOUS can also avoid an useless laparotomy. The aim of this study is to assess, both in our experience and in the cited literature, the concordance rate between the pancreatic cancer preoperative staging, performed with TC and MRI (when it is available), and intraoperative staging, performed with intraoperative laparotomic or laparoscopic echography. Material and methods: We have analyzed the treatment management of 34 patients, who were candidate to major surgery for suspected pancreatic head cancer and who underwent to intraoperative LIOUS or IOUS staging from 2001 to 2012. Results: LIOUS and IOUS have allowed to detect cases in which preoperative diagnosis, proved by CT and MRI, was not agreeing with intraoperative diagnosis (22 patients on 34, 64% discordance rate), avoiding the execution of a demolitive and uneseful surgery in order to guarantee the surveillance and life's quality of patients. Conclusion: We suggest to perform in every patients undergone to pancreatic surgery an intraoperative ultrasound exam, to detect unresecable and unpredicted lesions.