European Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine

Background: This study was conducted to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of transabdominal ultrasound in preoperative staging of carcinoma of the stomach with postoperative histopathological findings, which is the reference standard. Methods: This was a hospital-based cross-sectional study conducted among 70 patients with endoscopic biopsy proven carcinoma stomach cases, referred to the department of Radio diagnosis at the Government Medical College Hospital, Thrissur, over a period of one year after obtaining clearance from the institutional ethics committee and written informed consent from the study participants. Results: No T1 cases were detected in this study. The sensitivity for T2, T3 and T4 stages was 92%, 91.7% and 37.5% respectively. Specificity for T2, T3 and T4 stages was 91%, 79.4% and 100% respectively. The sensitivity for N1, N2 and N3 stages was 76.9%, 94.3% and 59.1% respectively. Specificity for N1, N2 and N3 stages was 98.2%, 74.3% and 100% respectively. Cases with metastasis were not included in this study as HPR was unavailable. Conclusion: Transabdominal ultrasound is accurate in the preoperative T staging of carcinoma of the stomach in advanced cases. In this study, the sensitivity for T4 was lower compared to T2 and T3 because most of the cases underwent only palliative procedures and hence were excluded from this study. On the other hand, sensitivity for N3 is lower compared to N1 and N2 because of the limited acoustic window; however, it has high specificity.