Diagnostic Accuracy of MRI for Detecting the Preoperative Tumor Staging of Colorectal Carcinoma

Abstract

Colorectal cancer is the third most common carcinoma worldwide and is second leading cause of death in the developed world. Early detection of tumor staging may lead to opting proper management plan and increase chances of survival. Objective: To determine diagnostic accuracy of MRI in evaluating preoperative tumor staging of colorectal carcinoma. Methods: The cross-sectional study was conducted at, Liaquat University Hospital - Hyderabad/Jamshoro from Jan 2022 to July 2022 on a sample of 204 patients of either gender with aged between 20 to 80 years and presenting with suspected colorectal cancer, diagnosed on the basis of clinical symptoms and physical examination. Patients were enquired about age, gender, duration of symptoms, history of per-rectal bleeding and pain. Preoperative MRI scan along with the Postoperative histopathological assessment of colorectal carcinoma staging of all patients was done. Results: Out of 204 patients, 60% of sample i.e. 123 patients were male and 81 (40%) were females with a median age of 68 (29-92) years. Most of the patients had well differentiated colorectal cancers i.e. 175 (85.8%) with 2/3rd sample had more than 5 cm height of primary tumor from the anal verge. T3 tumor stage was found to be highest in number (50.5%), followed by T2 (30.9%) and T4 (11.3%). The diagnostic parameters of preoperative MRI in detecting tumor staging was found to be good when correspondent to postoperative histological findings. Conclusion: The study showed that the accuracy of MRI in staging colorectal cancer is significantly high when compared with postoperative histopathological staging.