Intraoperative localization of early-stage gastrointestinal tumors using a marking clip detector system

Intraoperative Tumor site recognition is extremely difficult during laparoscopic surgical treatment of early-stage gastrointestinal carcinoma. A novel marking method that uses both metallic clips and a marking clip detector system (MCDS, Olympus Optical Co., Tokyo, Japan) modified from a metal detector system, was designed by the authors. Metallic clips were applied to the tumor site during preoperative endoscopy, and the clip site was identified intraoperatively using the MCDS. In a basic ex vivo study, three metallic clips were detected easily (100% detection). In a clinical study, the marking site was detected in all gastric cancer patients who underwent laparoscopic subtotal gastrectomy. The mean distance between detected site and clip along the longitudinal bowel axis was 6.4 +/- 2.9 mm. Mean detection time was 18.1 +/- 5.7 seconds. None of the patients in this study experienced complications from this marking technique. MCDS allows accurate identification of tumor sites. This method may be useful for tumor-site identification during laparoscopic gastrectomy.