EUS Shear Wave for Solid Pancreatic Lesions.

The pancreas is a retroperitoneal organ that can cause inflammatory and neoplastic diseases, significantly impacting the quality of life to survival. Acute pancreatitis is one of the most frequent gastrointestinal causes for hospital admission in industrialized countries. Chronic pancreatitis, although lower in incidence, significantly reduces patients' quality of life. Pancreas cancer is one of the neoplastic diseases with high mortality worldwide. Those diseases have been associated with significant morbidity, mortality, and hospitalization costs The diagnosis of pancreas diseases is based on a combination of clinical signs, symptoms, and laboratory tests, but mainly on imaging techniques such as computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR). Imaging provides a significant contribution to the diagnosis of pancreatic diseases and severity estimation or staging for inflammatory and neoplastic lesions, respectively. However, CT/MR have variable sensitivity and specificity, with certain disadvantages. Endoscopic ultrasound with elastography is an important resource with higher diagnostic accuracy in assessing solid pancreas lesions. Shear wave elastography is a novel technique that can measure tissue elasticity by generating shear waves inside the organ using the acoustic radiation force impulse. EUS Shear wave velocities of healthy parenchyma and solid pancreas lesions as acute, chronic, autoimmune pancreatitis and neoplasia are under described and must be evaluated and contrasted. Therefore, the present study pursues to estimate the diagnostic accuracy of EUS Shear wave for neoplasia assessment among solid pancreas lesions.