Percutaneous biliary drainage effectively lowers serum bilirubin to permit chemotherapy treatment

摘要

Purpose: For digestive tract cancers, the bilirubin threshold for administration of systemic chemotherapy can be 5 or 2 mg/dL (85.5 or 34.2 mu mol/L) depending upon the regimen. We examined the ability of percutaneous biliary drainage (PBD) in patients with malignant biliary obstruction to achieve these clinically relevant endpoints.