Benign biliary stricture. Personal experience and technical notes

Benign biliary strictures are a binding situation for clinicians when choosing the best treatment. This is a benign disease and needs safe, effective and lasting therapy. Up to day non surgical treatment have been suggested as the first therapeutical option but surgery seems to support the best late results.

The authors report their experience in 206 patients, 64 males and 142 females, aged from 27 to 77 years, affected by postoperative (160 patients) or inflammatory (46 patients) biliary strictures. All the patients but three had been treated by surgical procedures.

Postoperative morbidity and mortality were 18.4% and 3.4% respectively. Follow-up ranged from 2 to 16 years. Late stricture of bilio-enteric anastomosis has been observed in 8.2% of patients and peptic ulcer or cholangitis in 4.9% of cases. Restenosis appeared after a mean time of 2.5 years (range 20 months-6 years), supporting the need for a long term follow-up. Effective late results have been reported in 91.5% of patients. No late complications of ineffective results have been observed after transduodenal sphincterotomy.

The authors propose some guidelines for choice charce of treatment, analysing the limits of non surgical therapy and underlying the best surgical tactics. Bilio-enteric anastomosis is a safe, effective and lasting therapy for biliary strictures; Hepp-Couinaud hepatico-jejunostomy is the best choice for high-medium stricture; transduodenal sphincterotomy preserves its important role in low biliary stenosis.