© 2003 Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine
SELF ASSESSMENT ANSWER
Treatment options for common bile duct stones
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
These are summarised in fig 1
. Endoscopic extraction of common bile duct stones after spincterotomy and mechanical lithotripsy has a success rate of up to 95% and is considered the treatment of choice.1,2 The reason for failure in this case was the large size of the bile duct calculus. Other reasons include bile duct strictures, unusual anatomy, and calculi beyond reach of the wire basket.1–3
[in a new window] Figure 1 Treatment options for common bile duct stones (CBD, common bile duct; ERCP, endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography; ESWL, extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy).
| |||||||||
Traditionally such patients have been referred for surgical exploration of the common bile duct but this procedure is not without risk, particularly in elderly patients or those with major medical comorbidities.4
Extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) was investigated initially for treatment of gallbladder stones, but a high stone recurrence rate has limited its use in this condition. 5 In recent years high energy ESWL has been
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
Relevant Article
- Treatment options for common bile duct stones
- H R Ferguson and T J Robinson
Postgrad. Med. J. 2003 79: 178.[Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
Topic Collections
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
