[Clinical significance of endoscopy of the pancreatic duct]

In the context of ERP, early pancreatoscopies--which had an external diameter of 2.3 mm or 1.7 mm--carried many disadvantages. Technical inaccessibility due to previous papillotomy and the rigidity and fragility of the endoscope limited inspection of the pancreatic duct. In the following years, this method was therefore not generally propagated. The recent development of highly flexible fine endoscopes with an external diameter of 0.5 mm, endoscopic inspection of a normal-caliber pancreatic duct is now possible without papillotomy. This new fully sterilizable miniscope which we present here is capable of inspecting normal pancreatic ducts without papillotomy in 90% of cases. Especially tumour stenoses of the pancreatic duct can be well documented using this miniscope.