Diagnostic value of endoscopic ultrasound in staging of pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer is recognized as one of the leading causes of cancer mortality, representing the second most common source of cancer-related deaths within the gastrointestinal domain. Surgical resection is currently the only definitive treatment; however, the subtle emergence of symptoms often leads to a diagnosis at an advanced stage, with merely 10%-15% of patients being eligible for surgical intervention. The primary obstacle to achieving a potential radical resection is the presence of distant metastatic disease or invasion of adjacent major vascular structures. This review aims to highlight the critical role of endoscopic ultrasound in the diagnosis and staging of pancreatic tumors. We systematically searched PubMed, MEDLINE and Web of Science by using 'pancreatic cancer' and 'endoscopic ultrasonography' as keywords. Relevant studies were reviewed and analyzed. Endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS) is efficient in the diagnosis and staging of pancreatic cancer, past studies reported the accuracy of EUS is 63% to 94% for T-staging and 44% to 82% for N-staging but there are still limitations that need to be comprehensively applied with other diagnostic methods to evaluation of distant metastasis for surgical resectability. Our review aims to reveal the value for the staging of pancreatic cancer.