title: Diagnosis of the level of depth in superficial depressed-type colorectal tumors in terms of stereomicroscopic pit patterns.
abstract: We investigated the relationship between stereomicroscopic pit patterns and histological structures in 93 lesions of superficial depressed-type colorectal tumors to assess the possibility of diagnosing the level of invasion by the pit patterns. All 9 lesions with Va (amorphous)-type pit pattern showed massive invasion into the submucosal layer (sm2, sm3). Massive invasion into sm was observed in 66.7% (6/9) of lesions with Vi (irregular)-type pit pattern, whereas 22.2% (2/9) of the lesions invaded the shallow layer of the submucosa (sm1) and 11.1% (1/9) were limited to the mucosa. Among the lesions with pit patterns other than Va and Vi, 93. 3% (70/75) were limited to the mucosa, whereas 6.7% (5/70) invaded the submucosal layer, but all were limited to sm1. These findings show that stereomicroscopic analysis of the pit patterns of the superficial depressed-type colorectal tumors is useful for diagnosing the level of invasion.
authors.affiliation: Second Department of Medicine, Kurume University, School of Medicine, 67 Asahi-machi, Kurume City 830, Japan.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kawano
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Tsuruta
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ikeda
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Toyonaga
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Tanikawa
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D015179:Colorectal Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008853:Microscopy; D009361:Neoplasm Invasiveness