[Endoscopic papillotomy today. Indications and results]

The therapeutic possibilities offered by endoscopic papillotomy have improved in comparison with the recent past by virtue of mounting experience and increasingly satisfactory results. The position of the surgeon in the face of this procedure is more serene and objective than those who concern themselves with the endoscopic method as such. In long-term personal experience, endoscopic papillotomy was indicated in 162 cases of biliary lithiasic pathology--associated and otherwise with Odditis--and angiocolitis, with and without the gall-bladder. The reference to endoscopic treatment was mainly confined to patients with associated pathologies, dependent and otherwise, that involved general or specific surgical risk, while evaluations of the lumen of the biliary excretory way, of the coexistence of more or less incisive biliary inflammation, of the age of the patient--all parameters to which are attributed special importance for the choice between derivative intervention and open papillotomy--do not possess particular significance for the endoscopic method. Results obtained and the low incidence of short and long-term morbility support the claim to absolute usefulness of the method when it is proposed on correct indications and carried out with expert technique.