Endoscopic management and prevention of migrated esophageal stents

The use of self-expandable metallic stents has increased recently to palliate inoperable esophageal neoplasia and also in the management of benign strictures. Migration is one of the most common complications after stent placement and the endoscopist should be able to recognize and manage this situation. Several techniques for managing migrated stents have been described, as well as new techniques for preventing stent migration. Most stents have a "lasso" at the upper flange which facilitates stent repositioning or removal. An overtube, endoloop and large polypectomy snare may be useful for the retrieval of stents migrated into the stomach. External fixation of the stent with Shim's technique is efficient in preventing stent migration. Suturing the stent to the esophageal wall, new stent designs with larger flanges and double-layered stents are promising techniques to prevent stent migration but they warrant validation in a larger cohort of patients.

Probe-based confocal endomicroscopy is accurate for differentiating gastric lesions in patients in a Western center

Objective： Probe-based confoeal laser endomicroscopy （pCLE） technique may improve the diagnosis of gastric mucosal lesions allowing acquisition of high-resolution in vivo images at the cellular and mierovaseular levels. This study aims to evaluate the accuracy of pCLE for the differential diagnosis of non-neoplastic and neoplastic gastric lesions.Methods： Twenty gastric mucosal lesions from 10 patients were evaluated during endoscopic procedure and were examined by pCLE. Diagnostic pCLE was followed by biopsies or endoscopic resection of suspected lesions. A senior pathologist evaluated the specimens and was blinded to the pCLE results.Results： Patients＇ mean age was 68.3 （range, 42-83） years and six were men. Thirteen suspicious flat or elevated lesions （classified as 0-Is, 0-IIa or 0-IIa ＋ IIc） and seven pre-malignant lesions （atrophy and intestinal metaplasia） were evaluated. One patient was studied during his long-term follow-up after partial gastrectomy and presented severe atrophy, intestinal metaplasia, and xanthomas at the stump mucosa. The location of gastric lesions was in the body （n=10 lesions）, the antrum （n=9） and the incisura angularis （n=1）. All neoplastic lesions and all but one benign lesion were properly diagnosed by pCLE. pCLE incorrectly diagnosed one small antrum lesion as adenoma, however the final diagnosis was intestinal metaplasia. The final histological diagnosis was neoplastic in 9 and benign lesions in 11. In this small case series, pCLE accuracy was 95% （19/20 lesions）.Conclusions： pCLE is accurate for real time histology of gastric lesions, pCLE may change the management of patients with gastric mucosal lesions, guiding biopsies and endoscopic resection, and avoiding further diagnostic workup or unnecessary therapy.