Technical tips of endoscopic ultrasound-guided choledochoduodenostomy

Endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) is clinically useful not only as a diagnostic tool during EUS-guided fine needle aspiration, but also during interventional EUS. EUS-guided biliary drainage has been developed and performed by experienced endoscopists. EUS-guided choledocoduodenostomy (EUS-CDS) is relatively well established as an alternative biliary drainage method for biliary decompression in patients with biliary obstruction. The reported technical success rate of EUS-CDS ranges from 50% to 100%, and the clinical success rate ranges from 92% to 100%. Further, the over-all technical success rate was 93%, and clinical success rate was 98%. Based on the currently available literature, the overall adverse event rate for EUS-CDS is 16%. The data on the cumulative technical and clinical success rate for EUS-CDS is promising. However, EUS-CDS can still lead to several problems, so techniques or devices that are more feasible and safe need to be established. EUS-CDS has the potential to become a first-line biliary drainage procedure, although standardizing the technique in multicenter clinical trials and comparisons with endoscopic biliary drainage by randomized clinical trials are still needed.