A tissue attached to self-expandable metal stents for biliary stricture could be useful to find malignancy

Biliary strictures can have several benign or malignant causes. We attempted to determine the usefulness of establishing a diagnosis using self-expandable metal stents (SEMS) in a prospective series of patients with suspected malignant biliary obstruction. Data of patients who underwent SEMS removal from August 2016 to December 2019 were collected. During this period, 55 patients underwent endobiliary biopsy and SEMS insertion and removal. Fifty-five consecutive patients (mean age, 69 years; range 53–90 years) were enrolled, and of these, 37 were male and 18 were female. A final diagnosis was established using biopsy specimens in 37 cases (67.3%) and surgical specimens in 6 cases (10.9%), with 12 cases (21.8%) diagnosed on radiological follow-up. The final diagnoses included malignancy in 34 cases (61.8%) and benign stricture in 21 cases (38.2%). Endobiliary biopsy had a sensitivity and specificity of 44.1% and 95.2%, whereas SEMS cytology had a sensitivity and specificity of 52.9% and 100%, respectively. Combining endobiliary biopsy and/or SEMS cytology yielded a sensitivity and specificity of 73.5% and 95.2%, respectively. (1) The use of biopsy results alone as a diagnostic tool yielded an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.70 (0.60–0.79). (2) The addition of SEMS to the biopsy results yielded an AUC of 0.86 (0.78–0.94). (3) The addition of CA 19–9 levels to the biopsy results yielded an AUC of 0.81 (0.71–0.94). (4) Combining the endobiliary biopsy results, SEMS tissues, and CA 19–9 levels yielded the best diagnostic accuracy, with an AUC of 0.90 (0.83–0.98). Detection of biliary obstruction using the combination strategy was better than the diagnostic results based on biopsy alone according to recent 3-year data. Our study suggested that SEMS removal could help establish a diagnosis of suspected malignant biliary obstruction.