Current status and evaluation of endoscopic treatment of biliary strictures / 中华消化外科杂志

ABSTRACT

For the characteristics including minimal invasion,low incidence of complication and better postoperative prognosis,endoscopic therapy is widely accepted to be the first line therapy for most biliary strictures.At present,repeated progressive dilation combined with multiple plastic stents placement is the main therapy for benign biliary strictures.The long-term effective rate is relatively high in surgery related strictures,but in the non-surgery related strictures,its long-term effective rate is limited and the optimal therapy should be chosen cautiously according to patients' condition.In malignent biliary stricutes,dilation combined with metallic stents placement is recommended to treat both of preoperative long-term drainage in patients with resectable tumor and palliative treatment in patients with unresectable tumor,while nosobiliary drainage is recommended in preoperative short-term drainage. The choice of unilateral or bilateral drainage depends on patients' conditons in malignent hilar biliary strictures.The merits and demerits of stents should be mastered before they are placed in stricture sections.Recently,a lot of new endoscopic technologies and methods are applied in clinical practice,but their curative effect should be tested.Therefore,accumulative evidence-based data are needed to make them more rational and more standard.