Self Expandable Metallic Stents (SEMS)

Dr. Baron at Mayo Clinic conducted the below study of placing Self Exandable Metallic Stent’s in the common bile duct and leading edges of each hepatic duct. The finished product is a stent within a stent that forms a big Y at the bifurcation. This way, the common bile duct is double stented and the leading edges of each individual stent reaches out to form the 2 branches of the Y.

I am lucky that I have seen Dr. Baron for all of my previous ERCP’s and he is an expert in stent placements. I have the double stents forming the Y that is mentioned in the study below and I think they have dramatically improvement my quality of life over the last 9 months. I am returning to see him next week for maintenance on this configuration because I am starting to get some symptoms back and mild elevation in bilirubin. I will report back after the procedure to update this thread.

I strongly recommend to those of you who are not resectable to consider this option at some point.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19945101

Rick