Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Oncol. Mar 15, 2016; 8(3): 240-247
Published online Mar 15, 2016. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v8.i3.240
Endoscopic palliation of malignant biliary strictures
Sanjay M Salgado, Monica Gaidhane, Michel Kahaleh
Sanjay M Salgado, Monica Gaidhane, Michel Kahaleh, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY 10021, United States
Author contributions: Salgado SM contributed to acquisition of data, drafting of the manuscript, critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content; Gaidhane M contributed to acquisition of data, interpretation of data, critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content, study coordination; Kahaleh M contributed to study concept and design, acquisition of data, critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content, study supervision.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors have no conflicts of interest to report.
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: Michel Kahaleh, MD, AGAF, FACG, FASGE, Chief of Endoscopy, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Weill Cornell Medical College, 1305 York Avenue, 4th floor, New York, NY 10021, United States. mkahaleh@gmail.com
Telephone: +1-646-9624797 Fax: +1-646-9620110
Received: August 1, 2015
Peer-review started: August 4, 2015
First decision: September 29, 2015
Revised: October 19, 2015
Accepted: December 18, 2015
Article in press: December 21, 2015
Published online: March 15, 2016
Core Tip

Core tip: Palliative therapies for malignant biliary strictures are crucial for a disease that so often presents with surgical ineligibility. In this paper, we highlight both the established and more novel endoscopic palliative approaches for these types of strictures. Perhaps the most established of these therapies is endoscopic biliary deprecompression via endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP), which is notably approached differently in extrahepatic and intrahepatic strictures. In cases where traditional ERCP fails or is not feasible, endoscopic ultrasound-guided biliary drainage has quickly become the second-line intervention. Finally, we end by discussing the literature behind more novel therapies, namely intraductal radiofrequency ablation and photodynamic therapy.