Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Oct 21, 2016; 22(39): 8658-8669
Published online Oct 21, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i39.8658
Endoscopic ultrasound-guided techniques for diagnosing pancreatic mass lesions: Can we do better?
Andrew C Storm, Linda S Lee
Andrew C Storm, Linda S Lee, Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endoscopy, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, United States
Author contributions: All authors contributed to the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Both authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose including no pharmaceutical or industry support.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Linda S Lee, Assistant Professor, Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endoscopy, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, 75 Francis St., Boston, MA 02115, United States. lslee@partners.org
Telephone: +1-617-2780359 Fax: +1-617-2645132
Received: July 1, 2016
Peer-review started: July 4, 2016
First decision: August 8, 2016
Revised: August 24, 2016
Accepted: September 14, 2016
Article in press: September 14, 2016
Published online: October 21, 2016
Core Tip

Core tip: Evidence-based techniques to increase the diagnostic yield during endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration (FNA) of pancreatic masses include: (1) use of general anesthesia; (2) use smaller (22 or 25G) needles for transduodenal FNA; (3) use If histology is desired, use 19G or core biopsy needles; (4) use suction; (5) use the “fanning technique”; and (6) use on-site cytopathologist or perform 7 needle passes.