Is endoscopic ultrasound examination necessary in the management of esophageal cancer?

Table 1 Baseline characteristics of meta-analyses on endoscopic ultrasound in esophageal carcinoma

Ref.	Timeframe	Patients (No. studies; P/R)	EUS types (MHz)	Study criteria
Puli et al[52], 2008	1986-2005	2020 (25; 10/15)	NR	EUS accuracy confirmed by surgery in distal and celiac axis lymph node metastasis
van Vliet et al[29], 2008	1985-2005	4713 (84; NA1)	NR	Comparison of diagnostic staging performance of EUS, CT and PET
Puli et al[32], 2008	1986-2005	2558 (49; 16/33)	NR	EUS studies on T and N staging confirmed by surgery
Thosani et al[30], 2012	1988-2008	1019 (19; 12/7)	Radial and/or mini-probe (7.5-30)	EUS in T1a vs T1b lesions compared to histology by EMR or surgery/excluded studies on < 15 patients, or with suspicious lymph nodes (> 1 cm)
Sun et al[76], 2015	1992-2013	724 (16; 10/6)	Radial, linear and/or mini-probe (5-20)	EUS staging accuracy after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Surgery was confirmatory test in all included studies.
Qumseya et al[36], 2015	1994-2012	656 (11; 4/7)	Radial, linear and/or mini-probe (NR)	EUS in BE and HGD, or esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC)/excluded studies on advanced esophageal cancer

¹Did not report retrospective or prospective nature of studies. References[29,30,32,36,52,76]. P/R: Prospective to retrospective ratio; NR: Not reported; BE: Barrett’s esophagus; HGD: High-grade dysplasia; EAC: Esophageal adenocarcinoma; EUS: Endoscopic ultrasonography; CT: Computed tomography; PET: Positron emission tomography; NA: Not applicable.