ABSTRACT
Palliative treatment of malignant biliary obstructions represent the principal indications of endoscopic or percutaneous transhepatic implantation of endoprostheses. Many kinds of biliary stents have been used to maintain patency of the bile ducts obstructed by benign or malignant strictures. However, the biliary stent in current use, has a tendency to become blocked. In order to maintain a long-term stent patency before clogging, biliary stents with large diameters are needed and some kinds of expandable metal stents are proposed. The Hanaro stent (Sooho medi-tech Co. LTD, Seoul, Korea) is a modified Gianturco Z biliary stent, made of 0,01-inch stainless steel wire with a zigzag pattern. It has a spiral, cylindrical configuration and is 10 mm in expanded diameter. It hes been used only with the percutaneous transhepatic technique. In this article, we describe a new method for endoscopic retrograde placement of a modified Gianturco Z biliary stent. This report describes our experience on endoscopic application of a modified Gianturco Z biliary stent in a patient with malignant obstruction of the distal common bile duct.