The safety and efficacy of self-expandable metallic stent placement for malignant biliary obstruction with surgically altered anatomy.

Background: Single-balloon enteroscopy-assisted endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (SBE-ERCP) has been increasingly performed for the treatment of malignant biliary obstruction (MBO) in patients with surgically altered anatomy (SAA), however evidence is scarce. Therefore, we conducted this study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of self-expandable metallic stent (SEMS) placement using a short type SBE.

Methods: We retrospectively examined consecutive patients with SAA who received initial SEMS for MBO at our institution between February 2016 and February 2019. We evaluated patient characteristics, technical and functional success rates, time to recurrent biliary obstruction (TRBO) and complications according to the location of the biliary stricture.

Results: A total of 26 patients were included in this study. The primary tumor was gastric cancer in 12, pancreatic cancer in 6, cholangiocarcinoma in 6 and gallbladder cancer in 2. The biliary stricture site was distal bile duct in 14, hilar bile duct in 3 and hepaticojejunostomy (HJ) anastomosis in 9. Technical and functional success rates were 92 and 88%, respectively. TRBO, median survival time, overall rate of RBO and early complications were not different according to the stricture site (=.36, .67, .67 and .12, respectively), whereas late complications were significantly different among the three groups (Distal Hilar HJ anastomosis; 0 67 22%, <.05). Furthermore, stent patency was not different between fully covered and uncovered SEMS in distal MBO.

Conclusions: SEMS placement SBE-ERCP was safe and effective for the management of MBO in patients with SAA, especially in distal MBO.