Accuracy and agreement of a large panel of endosonographers for endomicroscopy-guided virtual biopsy of pancreatic cystic lesions. Pancreatology : official journal of the International Association of Pancreatology (IAP) ... [et al.] Machicado, J. D., Napoleon, B., Lennon, A. M., El-Dika, S., Pereira, S. P., Tan, D., Pannala, R., Girotra, M., Kongkam, P., Bertani, H., Feng, Y., Sijie, H., Zhong, N., Valantin, V., Leblanc, S., Hinton, A., Krishna, S. G. 2022

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Although emerging data evidences that EUS-guided needle-based confocal laser endomicroscopy (nCLE) accurately diagnoses pancreatic cystic lesions (PCLs), there are a lack of interobserver agreement (IOA) studies utilizing reference histopathological diagnosis and for specific PCL subtypes. Hence, we sought to assess the IOA, intra-observer reliability (IOR), and diagnostic performance of EUS-nCLE using a large cohort of patients with histopathological diagnosis amongst a broad panel of international observers.METHODS: EUS-nCLE videos (n=76) of subjects with PCLs [intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm (IPMN), mucinous cystic neoplasm (MCN), serous cystadenoma (SCA), pseudocyst, and cystic-neuroendocrine tumors/solid pseudopapillary neoplasm (cystic-NET/SPN)], simulating clinical prevalence rates were obtained from 3 prospective studies. An international panel of 13 endosonographers with nCLE experience, blinded to all PCL data, evaluated the video library twice with a two-week washout for PCL differentiation (mucinous vs. non-mucinous) and subtype diagnosis.RESULTS: The IOA (kappa=0.82, 95% CI 0.77-0.87) and IOR (kappa=0.82, 95% CI 0.78-0.85) were "almost perfect" to differentiate mucinous vs. non-mucinous PCLs. For PCL subtype, IOA was highest for SCA (almost perfect; kappa=0.85), followed by IPMN (substantial, kappa=0.72), and cystic-NET/SPN (substantial, kappa=0.73). The IOA was moderate for MCN (kappa=0.47), and pseudocyst (kappa=0.57). Compared to histopathology, observers differentiated mucinous vs. non-mucinous PCLs with high accuracy (94.8%, 95% CI 93.3-96.1). For detecting specific PCLs subtypes, EUS-nCLE was highly accurate in diagnosing non-mucinous cysts (SCA: 98%; cystic-NET/SPN: 96%; pseudocyst: 96%) and slightly less accurate for mucinous lesions (IPMN: 86%; MCN: 84%).CONCLUSION: Diagnosis of PCLs by EUS-nCLE guided virtual biopsy is very accurate and reliable for the most prevalent pancreatic cysts in clinical practice.

View details for DOI 10.1016/j.pan.2022.08.012

View details for PubMedID 36089484