Endoscopic tumor diagnosis and treatment.

The abstracts from this year's Digestive Disease Week (DDW) show that endoscopic is consistently playing a prominent role in current gastroenterology. The topic of tumor diagnosis and treatment overlaps considerably with other review areas - e. g., endoscopic ultrasonography, endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP), and colonoscopy. This review therefore focuses on the following topics: enhanced imaging, endoscopic mucosal resection (EMR), and palliative stent therapy. Endoscopy with tissue sampling is increasingly becoming an integral part of transitional research, in collaboration with molecular biologists and geneticists, among others. This role is unlikely to be challenged by any of the rapidly improving pure imaging modalities, and may well become a core role for endoscopy in the years to come. Abstracts from this category are not included in this overview.