Abstract
We reported the clinical courses of six patients with benign postoperative strictures of the bile duct encountered during the past 15 years, and examined the problems in the management of bile duct stricture. It is important to first perform appropriate treatment such as percutaneous transhepatic biliary drainage to relieve obstructive jaundice and/or obstructive cholangitis to avoid secondary biliary cirrhosis or sepsis. Finally, the passage of bile juice into the small intestine should be maintained.
Recent non-surgical treatments can be undertaken by means of interventional radiology including endoscopic or percutaneous transhepatic dilatation of bile duct stenosis and also stent placement in the stenotic bile duct. In patients with serious complications such as secondary biliary cirrhosis and coagulopathy, these non-surgical treatments for postoperative bile duct strictures can be selected as an alternative to surgical therapy. However, bile duct stenosis in such patients often entails complete obstruction, in which case surgical treatment would be porformed as the first therapeutic modality.
