Inoperable biliary obstruction treated with percutaneously placed endoprosthesis

Biliary obstruction was treated with endoprosthetic drainage in 30 patients with pancreatic, 10 with gallbladder and 27 with biliary duct cancer, and 13 of the patients received more than one endoprosthesis. The median survival time in the respective cancer groups was 12, 10 and 9 weeks, including 6, 3 and 4 weeks spent in the patients' own homes. The patients with multiple endoprostheses had 24 weeks median survival with 22 weeks at home. Another patient, with a medically treated malignant endocrine tumour of the pancreas, lived for more than 3 years after biliary tract stenting. Complications associated with insertion of endoprosthesis were few, and clinical cholangitis occurred in seven cases. For individual patients it is difficult to predict the benefit of endoprosthetic drainage, but the procedure seems questionable if the predrainage bilirubin level is very high.