Raúl Antonio Brizuela Quintanilla*

First Professor, Specialist II Degree in Gastroenterology, University of Medical Sciences of Havana, Head of the Digestive Endoscopy Working Group of the Cuban Society of Gastroenterology, Ministry of Public Health, Havana, Cuba

*Corresponding Author: Raúl Antonio Brizuela Quintanilla, First Professor, Specialist II Degree in Gastroenterology, University of Medical Sciences of Havana, Head of the Digestive Endoscopy Working Group of the Cuban Society of Gastroenterology, Ministry of Public Health, Havana, Cuba.

Received: February 19, 2021; Published: February 25, 2021

Citation: Raúl Antonio Brizuela Quintanilla. “Endoscopic Retrograde Cholangiopancreatography in Pediatric Patients”. Acta Scientific Gastrointestinal Disorders 4.3 (2021): 48-49.

  Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) is a specialized endoscopic diagnostic and therapeutic procedure that combines endoscopy and fluoroscopy, very demanding in pediatrics. It is widely used in the adult population for disorders of the pancreas and bile ducts. Although ERCP has become a technique used in children in developed countries, experience with the technique has been limited, due to the relatively low frequency of diseases that require it, the technical and equipment difficulty, as well as the anesthetic difficulties involved. influence these limitations. Generally, the procedure is performed by an adult endoscopist using dedicated equipment, and the use of standard adult duodenoscopes in children over five years of age has been shown to be safe and effective. The use of a pediatric duodenoscope is imperative in infants younger than 12 months to five years and is preferred for young children. Pediatric duodenoscopes have a narrower working channel and it is essential to choose the right accessories, such as forceps, sphincterotomes, and stents for use in the procedure. Currently, there is a trend to adopt the standard adult diagnostic and therapeutic approach in pediatric patients. However, essentially, the indications for ERCP that require special equipment, the difficulties in anesthetic interventions, and the need for therapeutic management are relatively different in children. The Cuban Society of Gastroenterology and its Digestive Endoscopy working group intend to carry out the uniform development of endoscopic procedures in the different provinces so that studies that meet the quality standards required for this are carried out. ERCP, as explained, is a procedure that is absent in the pediatric services of the provinces, being performed only in the capital governed by the Hepatobiliary Surgery and Transplantation group of the William Soler Hospital. It is therefore of interest to stimulate the possibility of carrying out these procedures in Provincial Pediatric Hospitals with a good level of expertise, but for this it is necessary to create the knowledge and training bases both in the specialty of pediatrics and gastroenterology. Our country has been represented in several international events where it has exposed its experiences in this matter and that has motivated the interest on the part of specialists from other countries in learning about the development of the specialty in the field of digestive endoscopy [1-4].

Interest Conflict

The author declares that there are no conflicts of interest.

Copyright: © 2021 Raúl Antonio Brizuela Quintanilla. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.