[Chromoendoscopy]

Accurate detection of premalignant lesions and early cancers in the gastrointestinal tract is essential for curative endoscopic or surgical therapy, because prognosis of the affected patients is closely related to the size and stage of the neoplastic lesion. Recently, it has emerged new endoscopic devices that allow even cellular images in vivo during an endoscopic procedure. These technologies will change and improve endoscopic diagnosis. The combination and integration of different technologies in a multifunctional endoscope will offer new optical features in GI endoscopy. Cytoendoscopy will characterize the surface architecture, confocal laser endomicroscopy will immediately clarify the nature of the lesions by in vivo histology of the mucosal layer, and optical coherence tomography will accurately grade the invasion depth. It will need some additional time before this scenario comes true. Endoscopy will become more complex due to the new visible details. Education and training will play an important future role in GI endoscopy. However, it is not possible to use these novel technologies without before learn to identify early GI cancers lesions. Meanwhile these technologies are perfectionated and we overcome the learning curve to identify early GI lesions, chromoendoscopy will continue to be a safe, easy and inexpensive method.