Novel detachable stents for the treatment of benign esophageal strictures.

The radial force of esophageal stents may not completely change during extraction and therefore, the procedure of stent removal may cause tissue damage. The present study reports the manufacture of 2 novel detachable stents, which were designed to reduce tissue damage through their capacity to be taken or fall apart prior to removal and evaluated the supporting properties of these stents and the extent of local mucosal injury during their removal. The stents were manufactured by braiding, heat-setting, coating and connecting.

Comparison of sequential pancreatic duct guidewire placement technique and needle knife precut sphincterotomy for difficult biliary cannulation.

Objective: Pancreatic duct guidewire placement (PDGP) includes double guidewire technique (DGT) and transpancreatic sphincterotomy (TPS). DGT can be switched to TPS with ease due to the existing guidewire in the pancreatic duct. In this study, we aimed to combine DGT and TPS as a single technique, named sequential PDGP, and to compare its performance with needle knife precut sphincterotomy (NKPS) in treating difficult biliary cannulation (BC).