[I Brazilian consensus of endoscopic ultrasonography]

In the last 20 years, several papers have focused on demonstrating the impact of endoscopic ultrasonography findings on the management of different clinical scenarios in digestive disease. This fact is an indirect evidence of the difficulty of popularization of the method. On other hand, the limited availability of endoscopic ultrasonography in Brazil is a direct evidence of this limitation. This was the rationale for the organization of a consensus meeting on endoscopic ultrasonography. It was aimed to identify the best evidence that support the use of endoscopic ultrasonography in gastroenterology.

A panel of experts on endoscopic ultrasonography was selected based on the files of the Gastroenterology and Endoscopy Societies and on the registries of endoscope manufacturers. Two members of the meeting selected the relevant topics that were transformed into questions. The topics and the questions were debated among the experts five months before the consensus meeting. The experts were asked to perform systematic reviews in order to answer the questions so it could be possible to grade the answers based on the strength of the evidence. During the two days of the meeting the answers were presented, debated and voted. Consensus was reached when a minimum of 70% of the voters were in agreement. The final consensus report was submitted to the experts' evaluation and approval.

Seventy nine questions were debated by the experts at the pre-Consensus meeting. As the result of this debate 85 questions came out and were assigned to the members of the panel. During the Consensus meeting 22 experts debated and voted 85 answers. Consensus was reached for several clinical scenarios for which the impact of endoscopic ultrasonography findings were supported by level 1 evidences: differential diagnosis of subepithelial lesions and thickening of gastric folds, staging and diagnosis of unresectable esophageal cancer, indirect signs of peritoneal involvement of gastric cancer, MALT gastric lymphoma and rectal cancer staging, diagnosis of common bile duct and gallbladder stones, diagnosis of chronic pancreatitis and differential diagnosis of a solid mass in chronic pancreatitis, differential diagnosis of the pancreatic cyst, prediction of the results of the endoscopic treatment of esophageal varices and diagnosis and staging of non-small cell lung cancer.

There are the highest levels of evidences that support the indication of endoscopic ultrasonography for several digestive diseases and even for non-small cell lung cancer.