UEGW Report, Prague 2004: Endoscopic Highlights

Abstract

Last year's United European Gastroenterology Week (UEGW) as− sembled a fair number of excellent endoscopic abstracts, among them quite a few large and also randomized trials, most of which had not been presented at Digestive Disease Week previously. This appears to be a good sign for the further development of clinical research in this field in Europe. The most relevant ab− stracts, in the authors' opinion, are reviewed in the following. Advanced Endoscopic ImagingThis topic appears to be preoccupying the hearts and minds of endoscopists at present [1], and a separate session was devoted to it, as well as a number of abstracts. New zoom endoscopes were presented, which should better define early gastric cancer [2,3]. Narrow−band imaging (NBI) is another technique that may be useful for classifying Barrett's esophagus (BE) [4]. In com− bination with autofluorescence (AF), the accuracy of identifying early neoplasia in 14 BE patients with 27 known histological ab− normalities, the sensitivity of AF increased from 59 % to 96 %, and the limited positive predictive value of 76 % was increased to 96 % by the addition of NBI [5]. The same groups evaluated the value of video autofluorescence alone; in a careful study, 56 patients were examined by conventional video endoscopy followed by AF for detection of additional lesions. In five of the 19 patients with lesions, the lesions were only detected by AF. It is also sta− ted that AF detected seven additional lesions in the same group of patients [6]. The Olympus endocytoscopy system was tested in 75 colorectal lesions, but no further details about lesions or the accuracy of the system ("it was possible to distinguish neoplastic from nonneoplastic lesions") are given [7]. The same system was also enthusiastically presented (but without clear−cut results) in esophageal cancer [8], stimulated by in−vitro and in−vivo re− search [9]. In gastric cancer, the vascular pattern seen on NBI may correlate with the histology [10], but further studies on the clinical value of this are still needed.