Internal versus external biliary drainage in malignant biliary obstructions: is there a difference in the rate of...

Percutaneous biliary drainage is a frequently used method to provide biliary decompression in patients with biliary obstruction.

To investigate the between drainage type and infection risk in patients treated with internal-external and external biliary drainage catheterization for malignant biliary obstruction.

A total of 410 patients with malignant biliary obstruction who underwent internal-external or external biliary drainage catheterization between January 2012 and October 2016 were retrospectively evaluated. We investigated the correlation between percutaneous biliary drainage technique and infection frequency by evaluating patients with clinical findings, bile and blood cultures, complete blood counts, and blood biochemistry.

There was no statistically significant difference between the selected patient groups (internal-external or external biliary drainage catheter placed) in terms of age, sex, primary diagnosis, receiving chemotherapy, catheter sizes, and outpatient-patient status. After catheterization, catheter-related infection was observed in 49 of 216 (22.7%) patients with internal-external and 18 of 127 (14.2%) patients with external biliary drainage catheters, according to the defined criteria. There was no difference in infection rate after the biliary drainage in the two groups (P > 0.05). There was also no difference concerning frequently proliferating microorganisms in bile cultures.

Internal-external biliary drainage catheter placement does not bring an additional infection risk for uninfected cholestatic patients whose obstruction could be passed easily in the initial drainage.