Endoscopic drainage of pseudocysts.

During the last decade, great progress has been made in minimally invasive endoscopic techniques. For pancreatic pseudocysts (PPCs), endoscopic drainage has become the first-line therapeutic option. Recent advances in therapeutic endoscopic ultrasound (EUS)-related techniques have focused on EUS-guided transmural drainage, which is now replacing the conventional endoscopy-guided transmural drainage. While transmural drainage is usually performed using multiple plastic stents with or without a nasocystic drain, fully covered self-expandable metal stents are now being used with increasing frequency. In this review, we discuss some of the controversies related to the endoscopic drainage of PPCs.