title: Endoscopic ultrasonography for surveillance of individuals at high risk for pancreatic cancer.
abstract: Pancreatic cancer is a highly lethal disease with a genetic susceptibility and familial aggregation found in 3%-16% of patients. Early diagnosis remains the only hope for curative treatment and improvement of prognosis. This can be reached by the implementation of an intensive screening program, actually recommended for individuals at high-risk for pancreatic cancer development. The aim of this strategy is to identify pre-malignant precursors or asymptomatic pancreatic cancer lesions, curable by surgery. Endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) with or without fine needle aspiration (FNA) seems to be the most promising technique for early detection of pancreatic cancer. It has been described as a highly sensitive and accurate tool, especially for small and cystic lesions. Pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia, a precursor lesion which is highly represented in high-risk individuals, seems to have characteristics chronic pancreatitis-like changes well detected by EUS. Many screening protocols have demonstrated high diagnostic yields for pancreatic pre-malignant lesions, allowing prophylactic pancreatectomies. However, it shows a high interobserver variety even among experienced endosonographers and a low sensitivity in case of chronic pancreatitis. Some new techniques such as contrast-enhanced harmonic EUS, computer-aided diagnostic techniques, confocal laser endomicroscopy miniprobe and the detection of DNA abnormalities or protein markers by FNA, promise improvement of the diagnostic yield of EUS. As the resolution of imaging improves and as our knowledge of precursor lesions grows, we believe that EUS could become the most suitable method to detect curable pancreatic neoplasms in correctly identified asymptomatic at-risk patients.
authors.affiliation: Gabriele Lami, Maria Rosa Biagini, Andrea Galli, Gastroenterology Unit, Department of Clinical Pathophysiology, University of Florence Medical School, 50139 Florence, Italy.
authors.forename: Gabriele
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Lami
authors.affiliation: Gabriele Lami, Maria Rosa Biagini, Andrea Galli, Gastroenterology Unit, Department of Clinical Pathophysiology, University of Florence Medical School, 50139 Florence, Italy.
authors.forename: Maria Rosa
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Biagini
authors.affiliation: Gabriele Lami, Maria Rosa Biagini, Andrea Galli, Gastroenterology Unit, Department of Clinical Pathophysiology, University of Florence Medical School, 50139 Florence, Italy.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Galli
keywords: Endoscopic ultrasonography; Pancreatic cancer; Surveillance