title: Temporary placement of stent grafts in postsurgical benign biliary strictures: a single center experience.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To evaluate the effect of temporary stent graft placement in the treatment of benign anastomotic biliary strictures.
  
  
  METHODS
  Nine patients, five women and four men, 22-64 years old (mean, 47.5 years), with chronic benign biliary anastomotic strictures, refractory to repeated balloon dilations, were treated by prolonged, temporary placement of stent-grafts. Four patients had strictures following a liver transplantation; three of them in bilio-enteric anastomoses and one in a choledocho-choledochostomy. Four of the other five patients had strictures at bilio-enteric anastomoses, which developed after complications following laparoscopic cholecystectomies and in one after a Whipple procedure for duodenal carcinoma. In eight patients, balloon-expandable stent-grafts were placed and one patient was treated by insertion of a self-expanding stent-graft.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In the transplant group, treatment of patients with bilio-enteric anastomoses was unsuccessful (mean stent duration, 30 days). The patient treated for stenosis in the choledocho-choledochostomy responded well to consecutive self-expanding stent-graft placement (total placement duration, 112 days). All patients with bilio-enteric anastomoses in the non-transplant group were treated successfully with stent-grafts (mean placement duration, 37 days).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Treatment of benign biliary strictures with temporary placement of stent-grafts has a positive effect, but is less successful in patients with strictures developed following a liver transplant.
authors: Department of Radiology, Division of Interventional Radiology, University of Michigan, MI 48109-5868, USA. ranjithv@med.umich.edu
authors: Ranjith
authors: R
authors: Vellody
authors: Jonathon M
authors: JM
authors: Willatt
authors: Mohammad
authors: M
authors: Arabi
authors: Wojciech B
authors: WB
authors: Cwikiel
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000714:Anastomosis, Surgical / Q000009:adverse effects; D002779:Cholestasis / Q000209:etiology / Q000601:surgery*; D003251:Constriction, Pathologic; D020878:Device Removal; D005260:Female; D005548:Foreign-Body Migration; D006801:Humans; D016031:Liver Transplantation / Q000009:adverse effects; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011183:Postoperative Complications; D015607:Stents; D055815:Young Adult