Determining gastric cancer resectability by dynamic MDCT

Purpose Multi-detector row CT (MDCT) has been widely used to detect primary lesions and to evaluate TNM staging. In this study we evaluated the accuracy of dynamic MDCT in the preoperative determination of the resectability of gastric cancer. Methods MDCT was used to image 350 cases of gastric cancer diagnosed by biopsy before surgery. MDCT findings regarding TNM staging and resectability were correlated with surgical and pathological findings. Results The accuracy of MDCT for staging gastric cancer was high, especially for tumour stage T1 (94.3%), lymph node stage N2 (87.3%), and for predicting distant metastases (>96.6%). When resectability was considered to be the outcome, the total accuracy of MDCT was 87.4%, sensitivity was 89.7% and specificity was 76.7%. Results showed high sensitivity for identifying peritoneal seeding (90.0%) and for predicting liver metastasis (80.0%). Conclusion Dynamic enhanced MDCT is useful for TNM staging of gastric cancers and for predicting tumour respectability preoperatively.