Clinical and radiologic examinations cannot reliably distinguish benign or inflammatory pancreatic disease from carcinoma. The increased use of pancreatic fine needle aspiration (FNA) along with advances in imaging techniques and the introduction of endoscopic ultrasound guidance have led to significantly better detection and recognition of pancreatic masses. Consequently, pancreatic cytopathol...

Clinical and radiologic examinations cannot reliably distinguish benign or inflammatory pancreatic disease from carcinoma. The increased use of pancreatic fine needle aspiration (FNA) along with advances in imaging techniques and the introduction of endoscopic ultrasound guidance have led to significantly better detection and recognition of pancreatic masses. Consequently, pancreatic cytopathol...

BACKGROUND High fasting plasma glucose (FPG) levels before fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) administration for positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) might affect the accuracy of 18-fluoro-deoxy-glucose-positron emission tomography-computed tomography (FDG-PET/CT) in diagnosis of pancreatic lesions. Current guidelines require FPG levels of < 200 mg/dL before FDG administration; howev...

Objective. Classification diagnosis was performed for cystic pancreatic lesions using ultrasound (US) and contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) to explore the diagnostic value of CEUS by comparison with enhanced CT. Methods. Sixty-four cases with cystic pancreatic lesions were included in this study. The cystic lesions of pancreas were classified into four types by US, CEUS, and CT: type I uniloc...

BACKGROUND The negative predictive value of endoscopic ultrasonography-guided fine needle aspiration for the diagnosis of solid pancreatic lesions remains low, and the biopsy specimens are sometimes inadequate for appropriate pathological diagnosis. AIMS To evaluate the usefulness of a novel method of contrast-enhanced harmonic endoscopic ultrasonography-guided fine-needle aspiration for the ...

Hypoxia promotes angiogenesis, proliferation, invasion, and metastasis of pancreatic cancer. Essentially, all studies of the hypoxia pathway in pancreatic cancer research to date have focused on fully malignant tumors or cancer cell lines, but the potential role of hypoxia inducible factors (HIF) in the progression of premalignant lesions has not been critically examined. Here, we show that HIF...

PURPOSE To compare the capabilities of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) and normalized ADC using the pancreatic parenchyma as reference organ in the characterization of focal pancreatic lesions. PATIENTS AND METHODS Thirty-six patients with focal pancreatic lesions (malignant, n=18; benign tumors, n=10; focal pancreatitis, n=8) underwent diffusion-weighted MR imaging (DWI) at 1.5-Tesla us...

BACKGROUND Endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) guided fine-needle aspiration (FNA) of pancreatic lesions is being increasingly used. Our aim was to determine the safety, accuracy, and clinical utility of EUS-guided FNA in both the diagnosis and staging of pancreatic cancer. METHODS Forty-four patients (24 men/20 women) had EUS-guided FNA of pancreatic lesions (39 head/neck, 5 body, 3 tail) and/or ass...