EUS and Disease Management

Endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS) is a very accurate technique for diagnosing and staging many diseases of the gastrointestinal tract and neighboring organs. However, EUS results do not stand on their own, but have to be formulated by physicians and interpreted and used by other physicians. Here the issue is one of EUS in relation to disease management - in other words, whether the application of EUS in real clinical practice is useful in altering patient management, influencing treatment decisions, and leading to cost savings.
In this issue of Endoscopy, Ainsworth et al. [1] address the interesting topic of EUS outcomes. They followed up 344 patients who were examined with EUS over a 3-year period, in order to assess their final outcome. They were able to examine medical records from the referring departments and combine these data with a search in the central hospital database. This type of computerized database, including information about every admission of a patient to one hospital in the county in which the study was conducted, is a tool of the utmost importance - not only for administrative and statistical purposes, but also for every type of investigation and for epidemiological research.
The article by Ainsworth et al. [1] shows that at least three major conclusions can be drawn on the subject of disease management with EUS.

References

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• 10 Fusaroli P, Vallar R, Togliani T. et al . Scientific publications in endoscopic ultrasonography: a 20-year global survey of the literature.  Endoscopy. 2002;  34 451-456