Two-phase dynamic contrast-enhanced computed tomography with water-filling method for staging of gastric carcinoma

The objective of the study was to evaluate the usefulness of two-phase incremental contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CT) with water-filling method in the preoperative assessment of stomach carcinoma. Dynamic CT was done in 20 patients with biopsy-proven gastric cancers and the findings were compared with surgery. A 150-ml ionic contrast medium was administered intravenously at a flow rate of 3.5 ml/s. CT scanning was done at 45 s (early phase) and 3 min (equilibrium phase) after the start of intravenous injection. Primary tumors were detected in all the cases. The overall accuracies of dynamic CT in determining depth of tumor invasion, pancreatic invasion, adjacent liver infiltration, and lymph node metastasis were 85% (17/20), 90% (18/20), 85% (17/20), and 69% (13/19), respectively. The early phase of dynamic CT is highly accurate in determining the depth of tumor invasion of advanced gastric cancers but has low sensitivity in the detection of nodal metastasis. The delayed phase scans do not add any additional information and hence, should not be routinely used for staging.