Influence of the safety and diagnostic accuracy of preoperative endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspiration for resectable pancreatic cancer on clinical performance

Figure 1 Study participants. This flowchart explains how the final sample size was arrived at and which patients were included. Ninety-one patients with pancreatic cancer underwent radical surgery. Nine patients were treated with chemotherapy or chemoradiotherapy preoperatively and were therefore excluded. The remaining 82 patients were divided into 2 groups. One group consisted of patients who underwent endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspiration (EUS-FNA) before the operation (FNA+ group; n = 54), and the other group included patients who did not undergo EUS-FNA before the operation (FNA- group; n = 28). The decision to use preoperative EUS-FNA was made by a surgeon. NAC: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy or chemoradiotherapy; EUS-FNA: Endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspiration.