[Endosonography of the esophagus and stomach]

Endosonography is considered to be the most exact method for the staging of carcionomas of the oesophagus and stomach. It enables a differentiation of the T stages of carcinomas of the oesophagus and stomach with an accuracy of between 65 and 90 %. Endosonography with a mini-probe, however, does not appear to be superior to the macroscopic evaluation by an experienced endoscopist. A further decisive criterion for therapy is the lymph node status. Here, endosonography exhibits a high sensitivity albeit with an unsatisfactory specificity. The specificity can be increased by the cytological evaluation of biopsy samples from the fine needle puncture of suspicious lymph nodes, a method with a very low complication rate. But new methods such as contrast medium-enhanced endosonography or elastography also appear to be useful for the differentiation of suspicious lymph nodes.