Endoscopic Diagnosis and Palliative Treatment in Bilio-Pancreatic Tumours

The nature of a biliary and pancreatic tumour continues to remain a challenge. Althought CT and ultrasonography (US) allow the accurate diagnosis of biliay and pancreatic ducts enlargement, the tumour’s exact position and extension are hard to say. On the other hand ERCP is able to localise the obstruction site, but hasn’t the same accuracy regarding biliary and pancreatic tree tumours staging. Echoendoscopy (EUS) is capable of an accurate tumor staging, with the exception of liver hilum tumors.

The malignancy diagnosis is made when the invasion of the tumoral cells in the stroma is seen on the bioptic fragment. The advantage of endoscopic techniques over other diagnosis procedures consist in the opportunity to perform simultaneously palliation and tissue acquisition for histological diagnosis.
 

In this workshop we will deal with the main endoscopic techniques used in the diagnosis of biliary and pancreatic tumours and get an insight into their advantages and draw backs. On this basis, our aim is to ease their understanding and to clarify their principles to the participants of our workshop.
 

Moreover, we will have an approach to the palliative treatment of these tumours and we will focus on the novel PDT (photodynamic therapy) and its utility in the management of biliary and pancreatic neoplasms.