Abstract
INTRODUCTION
Pancreatic cancer is the fourth most common cause of cancer-related deaths. Pancreatic adenocarcinoma (85-95%) and cystic tumors (10%) are a common group of pancreatic neoplasms in clinical practice. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is currently the reliable method of choice for preoperative evaluation of these patients. In this study, we aimed to evaluate MRI features, MRI-pathologic correlations of pancreatic adenocarcinoma (aca) and cystic tumors, and also to make a demographic comparison between these two groups.
METHODS
Preoperative MRI and histopathology data of 45 patients, admitted between August 2010 and December 2015, were obtained retrospectively. Patients were divided into two groups: aca (32 cases) and cystic neoplasia (13 cases).
RESULTS
Aca group was significantly older than cystic neoplasia (p <0.001). An irregular tumor border was observed in 54.8% of the patients in the aka group, whereas the majority (69.2%) of the cystic tumors were found to be lobulated. There was a significant correlation between the histopathological result and the contour of the mass lesion (p = 0.009). T1W signal in the most cases (64.3%) of aca group was low, whereas all of the cases in cystic tumor were hypointense. There was a significant correlation between histopathologic result and T1W signal intensity (p=0.038). However, there were no significant relationship between histopathological findings and gender, tumor location, size-internal structure, pancreatic duct-biliary dilatation, vascular invasion, regional lymph node and distant organ metastasis.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
In the current study, there was a significant difference for mean age, tumor contour and T1W signal intensity between pancreatic adenocarcinoma group and pancreatic cystic tumors. However, there was no significant difference between these two groups in terms of other MRI findings and other demographic features.
There was a moderate but significant agreement between histopathologic diagnosis and radiological findings (Kappa = 0.643, p <0.001).
