Differentiation between malignant and benign biliary strictures can be challenging. Accurate differentiation of malignant biliary strictures from benign ones is crucial to guide management decisions. While conventional tissue acquisition techniques such as brush cytology or intraductal biopsy of the biliary stricture is often performed during ERCP for tissue diagnosis, their sensitivities are suboptimal. The average sensitivities for brush cytology and intraductal biopsy were reported to be \~ 59% and \~ 63% respectively. When the cause of a biliary stricture remains unclear despite conventional ERCP techniques for diagnosis, cholangioscopy is often performed during ERCP to clarify the diagnosis. This allows an endoscopist to obtain a visual impression (VI) and to perform targeted biopsy under direct visualization of the biliary stricture. Recently, a digital SOC system (SpyGlass Digital System (SpyGlass DS), Boston Scientific, USA) has become available and has the potential to further improve the diagnosis of malignant and benign biliary strictures. The utility of this digital SOC in the evaluation of biliary strictures has not been well studied. We propose this study to evaluate the utility of the digital SOC during ERCP in the diagnosis of malignant and benign biliary strictures.
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sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of the digital SOC during ERCP in the diagnosis of malignant and benign biliary strictures.
Timeframe: Till a diagnosis of a malignant stricture is made, or follow up period of at least 6 months for presumed benign stricture