Comparison of Oral Contrast-Enhanced Transabdominal Ultrasound Imaging with Contrast-Enhanced Computed Tomography in preoperative tumor staging of gastric cancer

Purpose: To compare the diagnostic accuracy of oral contrast-enhanced transabdominal ultrasound (OCTU) with contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CT) for the preoperative tumor staging of gastric cancer, using postoperative pathology as the standard. Methods: This prospective study included 108 cases of gastric cancer with simultaneous OCTU and enhanced CT preoperative tumor staging diagnoses. Results were compared with postoperative pathology based on the 8th edition of the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) staging guidelines for gastric cancer. The accuracy of each tumor stage was obtained by comparing OCTU and enhanced CT diagnoses with postoperative pathology. The McNemar test was used to compare the overall accuracy of the two methods. Results: There was no statistical significance in the accuracy of OCTU (72.2%) and enhanced CT (75.9%; P = 0.644) for overall preoperative tumor staging diagnosis. For stages T1 to T4, the accuracy rates of OCTU were 84.2%, 81.8%, 69.4%, and 65.5%, respectively, and that for enhanced CT were 52.6%, 72.7%, 87.8%, and 72.4%, respectively. Conclusions: OCTU is comparable to enhanced CT in the preoperative overall T-stage diagnosis of gastric cancer.