Oesophageal cancer is a malignant tumour originating from the oesophagus.

It is the seventh most common cancer and the sixth deadliest type of cancer in the world, posing a serious threat to people's life and health.

Unfortunately, oesophageal cancer is often found in an advanced stage, with a high fatality rate and poor survival.

Therefore, early diagnosis of oesophageal cancer is very important for both patients and doctors.

Of course, this is not easy for endoscopists, because early oesophageal cancers are small and often lack typical features.

For a long time, when endoscopists find lesions, they will always take biopsies for several times to confirm their judgement, but this process may lead to complications such as mucosal bleeding or perforation.

The application of digestive endoscopy is the most extensive and practical in the observation and diagnosis of various digestive tract diseases.

The same is true for oesophageal lesions.

Of course, the diagnosis rate of early oesophageal cancer is relatively low through common gastroscopy, and pathological biopsy is always needed for a clear diagnosis.

With the continuous improvement of medical equipment for the detection of early oesophageal cancer, the international community has begun to pay high attention to the endoscopic observation at the cell level and gradually reduce the dependence on pathological biopsy.

At this point, endocytoscopy came into being. Endocytoscopy can enlarge the level of 520 and observe the changes of cells through special staining methods that do not cause harm, thus enabling early detection and diagnosis of oesophageal lesions.

At present, there are few studies on the observation and diagnosis of oesophageal cancer under endocytoscopy.

By summarising the published articles, we found that the accuracy (95%) and specificity (92%) of endocytoscopy for the observation and diagnosis of early oesophageal cancer are very high, which is comparable to the efficacy of diagnosis after pathological biopsy.

Therefore, the observation and diagnosis of oesophageal lesions by cell endoscopy is worthy of extensive recommendation and application in clinical practice.

The research is published in the journal Gastroenterology & Endoscopy.

Source: KeAi Communications Co Ltd