Esophageal cancer is a rapidly increasing malignancy with a poor survival rate. Treatment and outcome of patients with esophageal cancer are stage dependent [1]. Since its introduction in the 1980s, endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) has played an important role in the staging of esophageal cancer. The accuracy of EUS is 85% in initial tumor (T) staging (ranging from 59% to 92% in different reports) and 77% in initial nodal (N) staging (ranging from 50% to 90% in different reports) which is superior to the performance of computed tomography (CT) [2] and positron emission tomography (PET) [3]. However, the latter modalities are better at detecting meta-static disease, thus helping the selection of patients suitable for palliative therapy [3,4]. EUS is widely accepted as the standard modality for initial locor-egional staging of patients with esophageal cancer without distant metastases at CT and/or PET, thus helping to select patients suitable for surgery or neoadjuvant therapy [4].
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