Endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) is highly effective for the discrimination of Stages T1 and T2 from T3 and T4, in both the oesophagus and the stomach.
Initial indications are that the performance for T staging at the cardia is less good.
Non-traversable stenosis does reduce the staging performance of EUS, but evidence on whether this reduction justifies the risk of dilatation was not available.
The studies available on the use of miniprobes report a high performance for discrimination between mucosal and submucosal cancer. No evidence regarding the subsequent impact of these findings is available.
Lymph node staging with EUS has a lower performance than that of tumour staging.
Staging for metastases using EUS alone is not satisfactory.