Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Dec 14, 2015; 21(46): 13140-13151
Published online Dec 14, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i46.13140
Endoscopic ultrasonography-guided drainage for patients with symptomatic obstruction and enlargement of the pancreatic duct
Uwe Will, Andreas Reichel, Frank Fueldner, Frank Meyer
Uwe Will, Andreas Reichel, Frank Fueldner, Department of Internal Medicine III (Gastroenterology and Hepatology), Municipal Hospital (SRH Waldklinikum GmbH), 07548 Gera, Germany
Frank Meyer, Department of General, Abdominal and Vascular Surgery, University Hospital, 39120 Magdeburg, Germany
Author contributions: Will U, Reichel A and Fueldner F designed and performed the research; Will U, Reichel A, Fueldner F and Meyer F analyzed and evaluated data; Will U and Meyer F wrote the paper; and Meyer F proofread the final version.
Institutional review board statement: The study was performed according to the recommendations of the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki for Biomedical Research and its later amendments, and according to the standards of the GCP and the guidelines of our hospital’s institutional review board.
Informed consent statement: Each patient gave written informed consent prior to the intervention.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have nothing to disclose.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, (descriptive) statistical code and dataset available from the first author, Prof. Dr. U.Will at uwe.will@wkg.srh.de. No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Uwe Will, MD, Head, Professor, Department of Internal Medicine III (Gastroenterology and Hepatology), Municipal Hospital (SRH Waldklinikum GmbH), Strasse des Friedens 122, 07548 Gera, Germany. uwe.will@wkg.srh.de
Telephone: +49-365-8282401 Fax: +49-365-8282402
Received: February 3, 2015
Peer-review started: February 6, 2015
First decision: April 13, 2015
Revised: June 17, 2015
Accepted: August 28, 2015
Article in press: August 31, 2015
Published online: December 14, 2015
Processing time: 308 Days and 22.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Endoscopic ultrasonography-guided drainage of the pancreatic duct (EUPD) can be considered a safe and feasible procedure and an alternative to surgical intervention for a select group of patients. Currently, EUPD remains an experimental clinical procedure, and it should be performed only in experienced hands with great expertise in interventional endoscopy/endoscopic ultrasonography. Further studies are recommended, perhaps in a multi-center design, to finally assess the clinical value of EUPD and to determine general selection criteria of patients for the procedure, as well as criteria for the technical/clinical success.