Foreword

Thierry Ponchon

Dear colleagues and friends,

Our newest issue comprises 16 original manuscripts (with one attached editorial) plus 2 case reports and 2 review articles and covers different topics from endoscope reprocessing to more advanced procedures, e.g. the following:

• Overview and analysis of the publications on infectious diseases linked to cross-contamination of flexible endoscopes, with subsequent recommendations on training, auditing, microbiological testing especially concerning the automatic endoscope reprocessors;

• Outcomes of endoscopic resection for superficial pharyngeal carcinoma (59 % R0 resection and 100 % disease-specific survival at 5 year in a first study with 115 de novo lesions, curative salvage resection in 13 out of 16 patients previously treated by radiotherapy in a second study);

• Respective accuracies of Narrow Band Imaging (70 %) and probed-based confocal laser endomicroscopy (89 %) to characterize Lugol’s voiding lesions as superficial esophageal squamous cell carcinomas in patients with a history of head and neck carcinoma;

• Specificity of anesthesia management during POEM (endotracheal intubation, positive pressure ventilation, prevention of aspiration, etc.);

• Removal of embedded esophageal metal stents by the stent-in-stent technique (5 new cases plus a review of the literature representing a total of 46 patients);

• Advantages of esophageal EUS on endobronchial EUS for mediastinal analysis in terms of time saving and need for sedation (155 procedures), with an attached editorial concerning the respective roles of EUS and EBUS for mediastinal diseases;

• No discontinuation of warfarin and low dose aspirin during ESD for a patient at risk (metallic mitral valve and coronary artery stent) and with an early gastric carcinoma;

• Close relationship between endoscopic classification and histological classification of gastric atrophy and intestinal metaplasia, demonstrated prior and after Helicobacter pylori eradication on a total of 230 patients;

• First demonstration of an increased accumulation in gastric superficial carcinomas of minute lipids droplets from ingested food opening the door to a novel functional diagnosis endoscopy;

• Addition of fluid cytology on post-brushing biliary lavage to increase the sensitivity of standard sampling methods performed on biliary strictures (126 patients);

• Role of side port on 22 G needle to increase the diagnosis yield of EUS-guided FNA in pancreatic masses (prospective randomized cross-over study on 30 patients, no difference with and without side-port) ;

• Better diagnostic yield of small bowel capsule endoscopy when performed within 2 days after the last overt obscure gastrointestinal bleeding (66.7 vs 40.6 %);

• Diagnosis of Dieulafoy lesions of the small bowel by single-balloon enteroscopy (8 cases);

• Adequacy of use (77.3%) and safety (adverse effects < 1 %) of sodium phosphate tablets for colon cleansing before colonoscopy in routine practice on 996 patients;

• Percentage of sessile serrated adenoma/polyps in colorectal polyps with hyperplastic features detected by chromoendoscopy with indigo carmine (2.7 % overall, 10.9 % in the proximal colon versus 0.9 % distally);

• High quality endoscopic and histological pictures of a sigmoid adenocarcinoma with a dome-type phenotype;

• Ability of EUS to predict the presence and degree of tissue fibrosis prior to colorectal ESD (sensitivity: 77.8 %, specificity: 57.1 %);

• Combination of viscous solutions and high-pressure injection to ease human ESD even with the endoscope in retroflexed position (45 resections, R0 resection rate: 91.1 %);

• Review of the technical advances and published results (9 series) of EUS-guided fiducial placement for the radiotherapy of pancreatic cancer (Need for dedicated multifiducial delivery system is underlined).

Enjoy reading!

Thierry Ponchon, MD

Editor-in-Chief, Endoscopy International Open