Characteristics of small early colorectal cancer in the non-pedunculated lesions and its relationship with the depth of invasion

Description

Li and co-authors examine small colorectal growths in this 2026 study, challenging the assumption that a lesion under two centimeters is automatically harmless. They reviewed 289 patients treated at Qingdao University's hospital between 2015 and 2024. The patients had flat, non-stalked polyps or early cancers. The team asked which endoscopic features predict cancer or deep invasion into the bowel wall.

Final pathology found precancerous lesions in 40.1 percent of cases, contained cancers in 38.4 percent, and deep submucosal invasion in 13.2 percent of these small lesions. A surface that looked full and swollen carried an odds ratio of 13.81 for deep invasion in the model, while certain magnified vessel patterns and tumors arising without a polyp stage also flagged danger. For malignancy itself, a depressed surface and an invasive pit pattern stood out. The authors built a nomogram, a scoring chart, from these features.

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Source: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/PMC13422327