Dual Sphincterotomy with a Needle Knife Over a Stent for Sphincter of Oddi Dysfunction

This 38 year old woman has increasingly intractable RUQ pain after cholecystectomy done one year prior. LFTs and pancreatic enzymes have been normal, and ducts are non-dilated, thus she is a Type III possible SOD patient. Initial goal is to define course of pancreatic duct for manometry. 5-4-3 Co...ntour catheter (Boston Scientific) is used to perform the pancreatogram which shows a small straight distal duct. The aspirating triple lumen manometry catheter (Wilson Cook) is used to cannulate the pancreatic duct, with continuous aspiration of fluid once the duct is entered. Careful stationed pullthrough manometry shows markedly abnormal basal pressures in both leads in the pancreatic sphincter. Plan is dual pancreatic and biliary sphincterotomy. Biliary manometry will not now change our plan therefore is omitted. Our first goal is to access the pancreatic duct so we can guarantee wire access for placement of a small caliber pancreatic stent which is critical for safety. Contrast is injected as the 0.018in Roadrunner wire (Wilson Cook) is advanced in order to outline the course of main duct. A separate biliary orifice is clearly seen, unusual in SOD patients. A soft 4Fr 3cm single inner flange pancreatic stent (Hobbs Medical) is placed. We did not want to use our typical 9cm long unflanged stent as even a 3 or 4 French stent might be traumatic to the tiny caliber of this duct out in the body of the gland. Next the bile duct is cannulated with a papillotome (Autotome 39, Boston Scientific), showing a small perhaps 6mm bile duct. Biliary sphincterotomy is performed in very careful stepwise fashion as landmarks are unclear and perforation is higher risk in small duct SOD patients. On the other hand, inadequate sphincterotomies offer limited chance of symptom relief. You can see here a patulous sphincterotomy. Next a pancreatic sphincterotomy is performed with the needle knife (Boston Scientific) over the pancreatic stent. Again this is performed cautiously due to the small size of the pancreatic duct. We are reaching along the stent and cutting the fibers deeply. This is a limited pancreatic sphincterotomy due to small pancreatic duct size, and concern for scarring of the pancreatic duct. It is important to document passage of the stent by xray or remove it endoscopically with two weeks or so. We and many other specialized centers perform dual sphincterotomies at the first ERCP in all SOD patients with abnormal pancreatic manometry and frequent or intractable symptoms based on the belief that response rates are better than for biliary sphincterotomy alone.