Abstract:
Objective To evaluate the differential value of preoperative MRI contrast-enhanced features and clinical features for patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) of different pathological differentiations.
Methods A total of 385 PDAC cases that met the criteria were included, and divided into the poorly differentiation group (190 cases) and moderate-high differentiation group (195 cases) according to the postoperative pathology. All patients received 1.5T MRI examinations before the operation, which included T1WI, T2WI, diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and multi-phase contrast-enhanced scans. The differences in clinical-imaging characteristics between two groups were compared. Multivariate logistic regression was used to screen the independent predictors, and a combined evaluation model was constructed. The overall survival (OS) and recurrence-free survival (RFS) in two groups were evaluated by the Kaplan-Meier method.
Results The proportion of patients with CA19-9 > 100 U/mL in poorly differentiation group was significantly higher than that in moderate-high differentiation group (70.53% vs 48.21%, P < 0.01). The results of MRI analysis showed that the poorly differentiated PDAC was more prone to low signal in the arterial phase (93.68% vs 74.87%, P < 0.01), marginal enhancement (57.37% vs 38.46%, P < 0.01) and MRI lymph node enlargement (39.47% vs 17.95%, P < 0.01). The results of multivariate regression results showed that online CA19-9 > 100 U/mL (OR = 2.316), low signal in the arterial phase (OR = 4.441), marginal enhancement (OR = 1.728) and MRI lymph node enlargement (OR = 2.415) were the independent predictors of the poorly differentiated state. The efficacy (AUC) of the image-clinical combined assessment model reached 0.724 (95%CI: 0.676–0.768).
Conclusions Low signal in the arterial phase, marginal enhancement, MRI lymph node enlargement and CA19-9 > 100 U/mL are the important radiological and clinical features for preoperative non-invasive assessment of the differentiation degree of PDAC, which can provide an important basis for preoperative non-invasive assessment of the differentiation degree of PDAC.