Proximal Extrahepatic Bile Ducts: Comprehensive Review

Proximal extrahepatic bile ducts are the biliary tree segment within formal boundaries from cystic ductcommon hepatic duct junction to sectoral hepatic ducts. Despite being a focus of attention of diagnostic and interventional radiologists, endoscopists, hepatobiliary surgeons and transplantologists they weren’t comprehensively described in available papers. The majority of the authors regard bile duct confluence as a group of merging primitively arranged tubes providing bile flow. The information on the proximal extrahepatic bile duct embryonal development, variant anatomy, innervation, arterial, venous and lymphatic supply is too general and not detailed. The present review brought together and systemized exiting to the date data on anatomy and function of this biliary tract portion. Unique, different from the majority of hollow organs organization of the proximal extrahepatic bile duct adapts them to the flow of the bile, i.e. viscous aggressive due to pH about 8.0 and detergents fluid, under higher wall pressure than in other parts of biliary tree.