ABSTRACT

Preoperative staging of rectal cancer plays an important role in planning therapy. In order to choose the treatment, regional invasion and possible metastasis of the tumor should be investigated in patients with rectal cancer clinically and histologically. As a result of this evaluation, the surgical strategy will be determined, and also a need of neoadjuvant therapy can appear.

In our study, 32 patients with rectal cancer were examined. All of the patients underwent ERUS examination and were staged according to ultrasonographic TN classification. Patients were separated according to their rectal localization (inferior, middle, superior) and stage. The specimens obtained during the operations were examined and staged histopathologically. Preoperative staging with ERUS, was compared with postoperative histopathologic staging. The accuracy rates of ERUS were 71,9 percent in staging depth of rectal wall invasion, and 68,8 percent in staging lymph node metastasis.

As a conclusion, because ERUS is safer, easy to perform and does not need any preoperative procedure, is determined as an appropriate method for preoperative staging of rectal cancer.