Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography : Perforation and long-term outcomes after endoscopic sphincterotomy

Sammanfattning: Endoscopic retrograde cholangio pancreatography (ERCP) is a commonly used procedure in various disorders of the pancreatobiliary tract. When extracting common bile duct stones (CBDS), the major duodenal papilla is divided using a papillotome to perform an endoscopic sphincterotomy (ES). Adverse events occurring shortly after ES are well-known and include perforation which, however, is difficult to investigate due to its low frequency. ES is often used in elderly and/or infirm patients with gallstone pancreatitis and cholangitis, to prevent relapse in biliary events linked to CBDS. Subsequent cholecystectomy in these patients remains controversial. What happens in the long term after ES is still partially unknown.In Paper I, we found an increased risk for both cholangitis and pancreatitis after ES for CBDS, without synchronic relapse of CBDS and when compared with the general population was found. In Paper II, we retained the ES group, but replaced the control group with controls with a history of gallstone disease. The increased risk for both cholangitis and pancreatitis without relapse of CBDS still remains but, no higher risk for malignancy in the pancreatobiliary tract was noted.We conducted study III, a prospective follow-up after ES, to evaluate to what extent ES prevents relapse into biliary events after cholangitis and pancreatitis caused by bile duct stones. We included 100 patients who did not have earlier gallbladder surgery and who were treated for pancreatitis and/or cholangitis. The patients then underwent ES but not cholecystectomy and were followed for a mean of 42 months. None of the patients had recurrent pancreatitis and one had cholangitis. This indicates that ES alone is an alternative to cholecystectomy in the prevention of further attacks of acute pancreatitis and cholangitis.Paper IV consists of 52,140 ERCPs that were registered with GallRiks, a Swedish population based register. A total of 376 cases were registered as perforations and 75 patients had a fatal outcome. These data showed that sphincterotomy in the pancreatic duct increased the risk of death from perforation but the risk of death was reduced when ERCP was performed at a Q4 centre.