Endoscopic Submucosal Dissection

Endoscopic submucosal dissection is an advanced endoscopic surgical technique for removing gastrointestinal tumors that have not yet grown into the muscle layer of the esophagus, stomach or colon. It was developed to achieve a single, en bloc removal of a tumor rather than removing it in pieces, since an intact specimen allows a more accurate assessment of how deeply a tumor has invaded and its risk of spreading to lymph nodes, and it followed on from older endoscopic resection methods such as polypectomy and endoscopic mucosal resection.