Endoscopic procedures and techniques applied to oncologic patients have been evolved into a very important tool applied to oncologic patients both for diagnosis and therapy. Many decades ago, endoscopy was introduced as a merely diagnostic procedure for the digestive tract. Current technology not only allows for early detection of digestive tract neoplasia, but also for organs that lay near (i.e., pancreas, liver, and lymph nodes), with the introduction of chromoscopy, electronic chromoscopy (narrow band imaging, FAIS, I-scan), confocal endomicroscopy, and endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) with/without fine needle aspiration or elastography, respectively. Therapeutic endoscopic procedures have rapidly gained a predominant place in the management of these complex patients and have displaced many surgical or interventional radiology procedures with the introduction of a variety of stents, for treating esophageal strictures, gastric outlet, and colonic and biliary tract. Other therapeutic techniques such as photodynamic therapy (PDT), intraluminal brachytherapy, and radiofrequency ablation (RFA) are now used with increasing frequency for focused treatment of tumors.

Resection of large areas of mucosa for early neoplasia, first developed in the Orient, is increasingly performed worldwide, such as mucosectomy and endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD). A variety of procedures using EUS are now used routinely, such as fiducial implantation and celiac plexus neurolysis, while others such as direct tumor injection and EUS-guided biliary drainage are under development. Still, other experimental procedures promise less aggressive intervention, such as removal or anastomosis of digestive organs through NOTES, EUS, or even anastomoses using magnets.

We are particularly interested in papers that demonstrate expertise and knowledge in the following issues:

• Stenting in upper GI tract
• Biliary stents
• Colonic stents
• Advanced diagnostic methods such as electronic chromoscopy or confocal endomicroscopy
• Luminal therapy, such as PDT, brachytherapy, or RFA
• Percutaneous access combined with endoscopy
• Endoscopic submucosal dissection
• Mucosectomy
• Locoregional staging of the early and advanced cancers by using EUS
• EUS-guided biliary drainage (choledochoduodenostomy, hepaticogastrostomy, rendezvous, and antegrade techniques)
• EUS-guided pancreatic drainage
• EUS-guided intratumoral therapy
• EUS-guided procedures in general and when applied to palliation

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jo/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/submit/journals/jo/endo/ according to the following timetable: