Abstract
Recently, there has been an increasing number of reports on a new endoscopic biliary drainage technique utilizing endosonographic guidance (endosonography-guided biliary drainage, ESBD), which can be employed in cases with difficult endoscopic biliary drainage (EBD) in stead of surgical drainage and percutaneous transhepatic biliary drainage (PTBD). ESBD enables establishment of internal biliary drainage via the abdominal esophagus, stomach, duodenum, or jejunum, and excellent results have been reported on its safety and effectiveness. In ESBD as in EBD, exchange of the stent is also possible. Development of devices dedicated to ESBD will increase the safety and reliability of this technique and accelerate the shift from PTBD to ESBD in many contexts.
