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©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Current trends and perspectives in interventional radiology for gastrointestinal cancers
Elisa Reitano, Nicola de'Angelis, Giorgio Bianchi, Letizia Laera, Stavros Spiliopoulos, Roberto Calbi, Riccardo Memeo, Riccardo Inchingolo
Elisa Reitano, Division of General Surgery, Department of Translational Medicine, University of Eastern Piedmont, Novara 28100, Italy
Nicola de'Angelis, Giorgio Bianchi, Unit of Minimally Invasive and Robotic Digestive Surgery, "F. Miulli" General Regional Hospital, Acquaviva delle Fonti 70021, Italy
Letizia Laera, Department of Oncology, "F. Miulli" General Regional Hospital, Acquaviva delle Fonti 70021, Italy
Stavros Spiliopoulos, 2nd Department of Radiology, School of Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens 12461, Greece
Roberto Calbi, Department of Radiology, "F. Miulli" General Regional Hospital, Acquaviva delle Fonti 70124, Italy
Riccardo Memeo, Unit of Hepato-Pancreatic-Biliary Surgery, "F. Miulli" General Regional Hospital, Acquaviva delle Fonti 70021, Italy
Riccardo Inchingolo, Interventional Radiology Unit, "F. Miulli" General Regional Hospital, Acquaviva delle Fonti 70021, Italy
Author contributions: Reitano E contributed to the manuscript concept, the study design, literature search, data interpretation, and article drafting; de’Angelis N, Bianchi G, Laera L, Spiliopoluos S, Calbi R and Memeo R contributed to the concept, the study design, data analysis, data interpretation, and manuscript critical revision; Inchingolo R contributed to the concept, the study design, data analysis, data interpretation, article drafting and manuscript critical revision; all authors read and approve the final version of the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors are aware of the content of the manuscript and have no conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See:
https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Corresponding author: Riccardo Inchingolo, MD, Chief Doctor, Director, Interventional Radiology Unit, "F. Miulli" General Regional Hospital, Strada per Santeramo, Acquaviva delle Fonti 70021, Italy. riccardoin@hotmail.it
Received: March 28, 2021
Peer-review started: March 28, 2021
First decision: June 3, 2021
Revised: June 12, 2021
Accepted: October 9, 2021
Article in press: October 9, 2021
Published online: October 28, 2021
Gastrointestinal (GI) cancers often require a multidisciplinary approach involving surgeons, endoscopists, oncologists, and interventional radiologists to diagnose and treat primitive cancers, metastases, and related complications. In this context, interventional radiology (IR) represents a useful minimally-invasive tool allowing to reach lesions that are not easily approachable with other techniques. In the last years, through the development of new devices, IR has become increasingly relevant in the context of a more comprehensive management of the oncologic patient. Arterial embolization, ablative techniques, and gene therapy represent useful and innovative IR tools in GI cancer treatment. Moreover, IR can be useful for the management of GI cancer-related complications, such as bleeding, abscesses, GI obstructions, and neurological pain. The aim of this study is to show the principal IR techniques for the diagnosis and treatment of GI cancers and related complications, as well as to describe the future perspectives of IR in this oncologic field.
Core Tip: Interventional radiology is a minimally-invasive tool for the diagnosis and treatment of different gastrointestinal cancers, representing a useful alternative to more invasive approaches such as surgery and endoscopy. Hereby, we describe the different radiological techniques for the diagnosis and treatment of gastrointestinal cancers and related complications, underlining the role of this specialty in cancer patient’s care.
