Background:

Recent studies have demonstrated the significance of precise presurgical local staging of colon cancer for identifying patients who are ineligible for laparoscopic surgery or who will benefit from neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Although computed tomography (CT) has been widely recognized as the accepted standard for imaging, the majority of published data have focused on how well CT performs in staging liver and extrahepatic metastases and the evidence supporting the accuracy of locoregional staging is poorer. Therefore, this study was conducted to determine the diagnostic accuracy of abdominal CT with contrast in the detection of local staging of colon cancer in comparison to post-operative histopathology.

Methods:

This Diagnostic accuracy testing study included 50 colon cancer patients conducted at Kobri El-Qoba military complex and Maadi military complex in the period between October 2021 and September 2022. A CT scan was performed on each patient receiving either an emergency or elective colon cancer resection. CT findings were then compared with the eventual histopathology findings regarding T stage as the gold standard.

Results:

The radiological accuracy of CT showed a 70.58% sensitivity and 78.8% specificity in the diagnosis of T1/T2 tumors whereas T4 staging had a sensitivity of 90% and a specificity of 100%. For local colon cancer staging, CT had an overall sensitivity and specificity of 76.73% and 85.53%, respectively.

Conclusion:

The results of the current study suggested that CT would be a reasonable imaging technique for the local staging of colon cancer prior to surgery.