The records of 80 consecutive patients with extrahepatic bile duct cancer, 45 women and 35 men, median age 70 years (33-89 years), were reviewed. The histologic diagnoses were adenocarcinoma in 45 patients, 34 cholangiocarcinoma and one squamous cell carcinoma. In 34 patients the tumor was located to the confluence, the right or left hepatic duct, in 16 to the middle and in four to the distal portion of the bile duct. In the remaining 26 patients the tumor comprised more than one of these locations (mixed location). Twenty-seven of the 80 patients (34%) were operated on with resection of the tumor. Among patients 70 years of age and younger the resectability rate was 57%. In nine patients the main surgical procedure was bile duct resection, in 15 patients bile duct resection and liver lobe resection, in 2 patients total pancreatectomy and in one local excision were performed. The resection of the tumor was regarded as radical in 12 patients and palliative in 15. The mortality rate was 11% after resection as compared to 30% in patients with nonresectable tumors. The most common postoperative complication was insufficiency of the anastomosis which occurred in seven patients. Three of these patients required reoperation. The median survival time in patients operated on with radical resection was 20 months, palliative resection 7(1/2) months and in patients with nonresectable tumors 2(1/2) months. The quality of life was estimated according to a special schedule and was found to be improved after resection as compared to nonresection. Patients operated with radical resection spent significantly less of their remaining life at hospital as compared to palliatively resected patients or patients with nonresectable tumors.
Hepatic angiography was performed following nonsurgical percutaneous transhepatic intubation of the bile ducts in patients with extrahepatic cholestasis. Vascular lesions of the liver (aneurysm, hematoma, arterioportal venous fistula, arteriohepatic venous fistula) were demonstrated in 27 of 83 patients. No clinical complications were observed in 22 of these cases. One patient with an arterioportal venous fistula developed marked hemobilia necessitating blood transfusion. In four patients with severe hemorrhage from an intrahepatic aneurysm, transcatheter embolization was performed. Two of these patients died within 72 h because of liver insufficiency.
Percutaneous transhepatic cholangiography (PTC) with subsequent external bile drainage by nonsurgically established percutaneous transhepatic intubation of bile ducts was performed in 105 patients with obstructive jaundice. Recovery of liver function and improvement in the patients' general condition prior to radical or palliative surgery, nonsurgical palliation in advanced cases of malignancy as well as relief of postoperative leakage from a biliodigestive anastomosis are the indications for the bile drainage technique used in the present study. Clinical aspects such as optimal period of preoperative drainage, frequency of catheter dislodgement, and rate of complications such as cholangitis, bile leakage to the abdominal cavity and risk for peritoneal hemorrhage are discussed. Two deaths occurred within this series.
The percutaneous transhepatic portal vein catheterization (PTP) with selective obliteration of the coronary vein and/or the short gastric veins in treating bleeding esophageal varices was introduced in 1974. In order to prevent recanalization of the vessels Bucrylate (isobutyl-2-cyano-acrylate) has been used in 43 patients 55 times during a period of 34 months (October 1975 to July 1978). The obliterative treatment was followed by rebleeding in 35% of the cases and continued bleeding occurred in two patients. Fourteen patients were treated on 16 occasions during acute bleedings, and five of these (36%) died within two months from a portal vein thrombosis caused by the obliterative procedure. Because of these findings PTP with obliteration of the veins feeding the esophageal varices is not recommended as an elective way of treatment. It should only be used in the acute bleeding patient when transesophageal sclerosering therapy, continuous vasopressin infusion and balloon tamponade have failed. Fifty-six per cent of the patients acutely treated stopped bleeding for more than one week, thus avoiding an emergency shunt or devascularization operation which are associated with a high mortality rate.
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