Abstract
The endoscope for gastrointestinal tract has shifted from fiberscope to videoscope(elec-tronic endoscope)and brought us great diagnostic and therapeutic yield. About pancreatoscope, the POPS(peroral pancreatoscope-fiberoptic-)is still used widely but it has some problems of low resolutioll and so on. It required a highly advanced technology to develop the electronic endoscope which could be inserted into the main pancreatic duct(MPD)and had put on the she shelf. However, we succeeded in developing the smallest peroral electronic pancreatoscope(PEPS)under the remarkable progress of electronic imaging technology in 1997 and have been doing clinical application of this instrument. The PEPS gives us extremely fine images of the MPD under various clillical conditions and we consider the PEPS is useful in the diagnosis of pancreatic diseases. It has a possibility in diagnosing early stages of pancreatic cancer. On the other hand, the PEPS is required to eguip the accessory channel and for improvement of insertion rate. Recently, to solve these problems, we developed the new PEPS with accessory channel and started clinical application. We expect that pancreatoscopy with the PEPS will become popular examination. And outline for the diagnosis of pancreatic diseases, such as standard diagnosis of chronic pancreatitis or endoscopic appearaud findings of early stages of pancreatic cancer, will be established in the future.
