Articles: cations.
-
Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study
Randomized clinical trial of intraoperative endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography versus laparoscopic bile duct exploration in patients with choledocholithiasis.
Various minimally invasive approaches exist for the management of choledocholithiasis at the time of laparoscopic cholecystectomy. The aim of this study was to compare endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) with laparoscopic bile duct exploration (LBDE) and test the hypothesis that intraoperative ERCP is no different to LBDE in terms of rate of bile duct clearance or retained stones. ⋯ ACTRN12613000761763 (http://www.anzctr.org.au/).
-
Liver resections have classically been distinguished as "minor" or "major," based on number of segments removed. This is flawed because the number of segments resected alone does not convey the complexity of a resection. We recently developed a 3-tiered classification for the complexity of liver resections based on utility weighting by experts. This study aims to complete the earlier classification and to illustrate its application. ⋯ These data permit quantitative assessment of the difficulty of a variety of liver resections. The complexity scores generated allow for separation of liver resections into 3 categories of complexity (low complexity, medium complexity, and high complexity) on a quantitative basis. This provides a more accurate representation of the complexity of procedures in comparative studies.