In patients who have undergone partial gastric resections, the difficulty of performing endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) is increased due to the resulting anatomic abnormality.
To review our experience of ERCP in patients with Billroth II gastrectomy and other types of gastrectomy (Billroth I and indeterminate) in our center.
We included all patients with Billroth II gastrectomy or other types of gastrectomy undergoing ERCP in a 19-year period.
We included 233 patients (91% men and 9% women) from 1993 to 2012. A total of 88.4% of the patients had undergone Billroth II and 11.6% had undergone other types of gastrectomy, with an ERCP success rate of 51.9% and 55.6%, respectively. The most common causes of failure were inability to cannulate (44%) and failure to identify the papilla (39.6%). The final diagnosis was choledocholithiasis in 31.8%. The mean number of sessions was 1.09. The complications rate was 2.6%.
The success of ERCP is influenced by the technical difficulty. For this reason, the success rate in our center was slightly over 50%, but with few complications.