The Importance of Preoperative Staging of Rectal Cancer Using multiparametric MRI Part II: TNM Cancer Staging

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The Importance of Preoperative Staging of Rectal Cancer Using multiparametric MRI Part II: TNM Cancer Staging

The reason a A) classic staging, B) modern staging or C) restaging is performed must be taken into consideration in order to have an appropriate staging. In general, staging is performed histopathologically after surgery, and offers information about the pTNM prognosis. The introduction of neoadjuvant therapy placed staging to the foreground and modified its base conditions: from the postoperative to the preoperative. Histological examination was replaced with imaging. The role of staging became decisive when choosing an optimal individual treatment, which reflects in high requirements as to its quality. Is it possible that imaging methods offer the same quality and safety of staging? The current answer is a decisive “yes” because in MRI “what you see is what you get”. If the measured depth is for example 5 mm in MRI, it also will be 5 mm in the histological result (Fig. 23). Consequently, MRI result is equivalent with the histological one. Therefore, it is logical to switch from anatomopathological staging to the imaging one.

https://revistachirurgia.ro/pdfs/2016-6-463.pdf