Percutaneously placed biliary stents in the management of malignant biliary obstruction.

The management of malignant obstruction of the biliary tree is difficult and often unsuccessful. Advances in the technique of percutaneous transhepatic catheterization have made possible the nonoperative internal drainage of obstructed lesions. We report successful decompression of ten patients with unresectable biliary neoplasms using percutaneously placed internal biliary stents.