Endoscopic and percutaneous drainage of symptomatic walled-off pancreatic necrosis reduces hospital stay and radiographic resources.

BACKGROUND & AIMS Walled-off pancreatic necrosis (WOPN), a complication of severe acute pancreatitis (SAP), can become infected, obstruct adjacent structures, and result in clinical deterioration of patients. Patients with WOPN have prolonged hospitalizations, needing multiple radiologic and medical interventions. We compared an established treatment of WOPN, standard percutaneous drainage (SPD), with combined modality therapy (CMT), in which endoscopic transenteric stents were added to a regimen of percutaneous drains. METHODS Symptomatic patients with WOPN between January 2006 and August 2009 were treated with SPD (n = 43, 28 male) or CMT (n = 23, 17 male) and compared by disease severity, length of hospitalization, duration of drainage, complications, and number of radiologic and endoscopic procedures. RESULTS Patient age (59 vs 54 years), sex (77% vs 58% male), computed tomography severity index (8.0 vs 7.2), number of endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatographies (2.0 vs 2.6), and percentage with disconnected pancreatic ducts (50% vs 46%) were equivalent in the CMT and SPD arms, respectively. Patients undergoing CMT had significantly decreased length of hospitalization (26 vs 55 days, P < .0026), duration of external drainage (83.9 vs 189 days, P < .002), number of computed tomography scans (8.95 vs 14.3, P < .002), and drain studies (6.5 vs 13, P < .0001). Patients in the SPD arm had more complications. CONCLUSIONS For patients with symptomatic WOPN, CMT provided a more effective and safer management technique, resulting in shorter hospitalizations and fewer radiologic procedures than SPD.