Pancreatic cancer — Palliative therapy: stenting

Pancreatic cancer remains a common and very lethal malignancy with a median survival of approximately 6 months. Surgical resection offers the only potentially curative approach but many patients (80% or more) are ineligible for this kind of therapy, because of age, comorbidities, or locally advanced or metastatic disease that does not benefit from resection. Thus, for many patients with pancreatic cancer treatment remains palliative and endoscopic therapy to relieve bile duct or gastric outlet obstruction becomes of special importance. Although both surgical and non surgical palliative procedures can relieve biliary and duodenal obstruction particularly endoscopic treatment with plastic prostheses or self expanding metal stents was shown to be not only highly effective but also to be burdened with only few complications. The present article summarizes the palliative endoscopic treatment in patients with non resectable pancreatic cancer.