Radiological staging of rectal cancer in a resource limited setting

BMC Research Notes

Ishan De Zoysa¹  Naradha Lokuhetty¹  Suranjith L. Seneviratne¹  Thanushka Marapana¹  Roshan Niloofa²  Fathima Asma Rahman² 

[1] Department of Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, Colombo, Sri Lanka;Department of Zoology and Environment Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Colombo, Colombo, Sri Lanka;

关键词: Rectal cancer;    Radiological staging;    Computed tomography;    Magnetic resonance imaging;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s13104-020-05327-4

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

ObjectiveCurrent guidelines on rectal cancer (RC) management recommend pre-operative MRI for loco-regional staging and CT for staging of metastases. This allows appropriate selection of patients for chemo-radiotherapy (CRT). However, MRI is not freely available in many low-income countries. We assessed the status of pre-operative imaging for RC in Sri Lanka and evaluated the performance of CT in RC staging.ResultsA pre-tested interview-administered questionnaire was used to assess the pre-operative use of MRI and CT in RC. CT findings from 37 RC patients were then compared with histopathology findings. Of the 64 surgeons interviewed, 57 (89.1%) did not request an MRI for their RC patients. Reasons cited included limited availability and long waiting times due to competing health needs. A CT was requested by all. In RC, the overall accuracy of CT for T staging was 43.2% and 29.7% of T1–T2 tumours were over-staged as T3. The overall accuracy of CT for regional lymph node staging was 70.3%. In summary, CT alone is not suitable for RC staging in any setting. It leads to over-staging and patients may thus receive unnecessary CRT. Steps must be taken to improve access to pre-operative MRI among Sri Lankan RC patients.

【 授权许可】

CC BY