Laparoscopic Narrow Band Imaging for intraoperative diagnosis of depth of tumor invasion of gallbladder carcinoma

Abstract

In the management of gallbladder cancer, the assessment of the depth of tumor invasion remains one of the most important issues to solve. We hypothesized that assessment of irregular vessels on the gallbladder wall might be useful for detection of subserosal infiltration. This study aimed to evaluate the feasibility of laparoscopic narrow band imaging (NBI) for the intra-operative diagnosis in 10 patients with gallbladder carcinoma. Laparoscopic NBI detected at least one abnormal finding, such as vessel dilatation, tortuousness, interruption or heterogeneity in 7 patients, and these findings associated with the pathological diagnosis of subserosal infiltration and lymphatic invasion. On the contrary, 3 patients with no abnormal NBI finding showed mild or no subserosal infiltration and no lymphovascular invasion. Our study showed that laparoscopic NBI may be useful for the diagnosis of subserosal infiltration and lymphovascular invasion.