[Comparative efficacy of sonography, computed tomography, ERCP and angiography in the diagnosis of primary papillary carcinomas]

In a patient group of 19 patients suffering from a primary carcinoma of the papilla of Vater that had been confirmed by surgery and histology, the preoperative diagnoses arrived at by the four imaging methods of sonography, CT, ERCP and angiography were compared on the basis of the intraoperatively produced tumour findings, and the accuracy of the methods was assessed. It was found that ERCP is superior to all the other diagnostic methods in respect of carcinomas of the papilla of Vater, diagnosis being correct in more than half of the cases. Sonography yielded the diagnosis of a space-occupying growth in barely one-half of the cases, whereas CT reported a mass in two-thirds of the cases, but no clear organotopic diagnosis was possible. In no case did angiography supply a pointer towards the correct final diagnosis.