 Hello friends, I am Dr. Kunal Das and I am consultant and head of the department, department of gastroenterology and hepatology in Manipal Hospital, Dwarkam. Today we are going to talk about a new instrument which has come in the armamentarium of the gastroenterologist which is endoscopic ultrasound. As it is formed of two words, endoscopic and ultrasound. It is a machine which is a flexible tube with an endoscope which has a light and a camera attached to it. And it has an important advance that it has an ultrasound probe at the tip of it. That is why it is known as endoscopic ultrasound. So what are the uses of this new and very funky looking machine? This machine is available to us and it is very useful for evaluation of various diseases of the GI tract like esophageal tumours, esophageal diseases, stomach diseases, early gastric cancer, various submicosal lesions of the stomach, duodenal lesions. As well as it is very important for the biliary and the pancreatic tumours and lesions like bilded cancers, pancreatic cancers, pancreatic cysts which are like water balloons in the pancreas. So these are the two various important causes where we utilize the endoscopic ultrasound. It is being used today both for a diagnostic as well as therapeutic purposes. For therapeutic purposes means that we are utilizing for the treatment. We have a specialized instrument known as endoscopic fine needle aspiration which is a specialized needle which goes through the endoscopic ultrasound machine. The uses of this fine needle aspiration is to take cytology and biopsies from the lesions like bilded cancers and pancreatic cancer lesions.