Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Endosc. Jan 25, 2016; 8(2): 77-85
Published online Jan 25, 2016. doi: 10.4253/wjge.v8.i2.77
Drug eluting biliary stents to decrease stent failure rates: A review of the literature
Richard I Rothstein, Timothy Gardner, Stuart Gordon, J Marc Pipas, Kabir Mody, Zilla H Hussain, Jennifer Saad, Sharjeel Syed, Kartik Sampath, Jisoo Kim, Joseph Shatzel
Joseph Shatzel, J Marc Pipas, Section of Hematology-Oncology, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH 03756, United States
Jisoo Kim, Sharjeel Syed, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Hanover, NH 03755, United States
Kartik Sampath, Zilla H Hussain, Stuart Gordon, Timothy Gardner, Richard I Rothstein, Section of Gastroenterology, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH 03756, United States
Jennifer Saad, Section of Internal Medicine, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH 03756, United States
Kabir Mody, Mayo Clinic Cancer Center, Section of Hematology/Oncology, Mayo Clinic Florida, Jacksonville, FL 32224, United States
Author contributions: All authors contributed equally to the work, researched the topic and wrote the review.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflict of interest related to the manuscript.
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: Joseph Shatzel, MD, Section of Hematology-Oncology, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH 03756, United States. joseph.j.shatzel@hitchcock.org
Telephone: +1-603-6508380 Fax: +1-603-6506122
Received: April 3, 2015
Peer-review started: April 4, 2015
First decision: June 2, 2015
Revised: August 11, 2015
Accepted: October 17, 2015
Article in press: October 28, 2015
Published online: January 25, 2016
Processing time: 291 Days and 10.2 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Despite the short life expectancies of patients with biliary tract cancers, biliary stenting suffers from high stent re-obstruction rates, provoking unneeded costs, morbidity and mortality. Drug eluting stents offer the possibility of decreasing stent failure rates from both biliary stent clogging, and external obstruction from tumor and epithelial ingrowth. In this inclusive review we outline the current body of experimental literature on drug eluting stents including bench, animal and human trials, and discuss possible targets for future research.