Early clinical experience with a new flexible endoscopic suturing method for natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery and intraluminal endosurgery (with videos).

BACKGROUND

To perform advanced endoscopic treatments, one has to be able to close defects and perforations. Many devices have been constructed to perform endoscopic suturing, but all are rather complicated, expensive, and difficult to use.

OBJECTIVE

To develop and use a new simple stitching technique at intraluminal flexible endoscopy.

DESIGN

A flexible 19-gauge needle, loaded with a metal tag attached to a 3-0 polypropylene thread is passed down the working channel of a conventional endoscope. Two tags are placed into the stomach or the intestinal wall, 1 on each side of the defect. The threads are then locked together and cut. Precise stitch positioning is possible. Multiple stitches can be placed quickly, without removal of the endoscope.

SETTING

Surgical department at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Göteborg, Sweden.

PATIENTS

Three patients in whom other conventional treatments had failed.

INTERVENTIONS

Initially, survival studies in pigs were performed, and full-thickness resections, pyloroplasty, and gastrojejunostomies could be completed. The technique was subsequently used in patients when surgery was not feasible and when other endoscopic interventions had failed.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASUREMENTS

Clinical evaluation; successful sealing of defects, leaks, or a bleeding vessel.

RESULTS

We present 3 human cases and describe endoluminal closure of a perforated duodenal ulcer, a leaking gastroenteroanastomosis after gastroplasty, and successful treatment of upper-GI bleeding by oversewing a bleeding vessel.

CONCLUSIONS

This stitching technique is easy to use and makes endoscopic suturing possible for closure of perforations and tissue approximation almost anywhere in the GI tract that can be reached by a flexible endoscope.