What does liver intervention mean?

  Hepatic interventional therapy is a minimally invasive technique for the diagnosis or treatment of liver diseases based on imaging, using puncture needles, catheters, guidewires and other interventional devices under the guidance of diagnostic imaging equipment such as X-ray, ultrasound, CT, MRI, etc.  Interventional treatment should be minimally invasive. For example, percutaneous transhepatic choledochotomy (PTCD) refers to the percutaneous transhepatic puncture of the dilated bile ducts in the liver and placement of a catheter for biliary drainage or decompression under the guidance of imaging equipment. It can be used as a temporary external drainage for acute obstructive septic cholangitis that cannot tolerate surgery, or as a means to reduce jaundice and improve liver function before surgery for hilar cholangiocarcinoma or pancreatic head cancer to improve the safety of surgery. For inoperable palliative treatment of hilar cholangiocarcinoma, internal drainage is best performed by passing a catheter from the dilated bile duct in the liver through the obstruction site of the cancer into the common bile duct. Based on percutaneous transhepatic biliary drainage, percutaneous bile duct balloon dilation and percutaneous transhepatic endobiliary stent placement can be further performed. The former is mainly used to treat benign biliary strictures; the latter is mostly performed by inserting a guidewire through the drainage duct a few days after the PTCD drains bile, withdrawing the drainage duct, and then inserting a catheter sheath along the guidewire into the bile duct to perform balloon dilatation of the stricture site, which is followed by the placement of a stent of the appropriate size through the guidewire. Commonly used stents or supports include mesh metal endoprostheses, spiral stents, Z-shaped metal stents, and plastic endoprostheses.  The advantages of hepatic intervention are still very numerous, as it is a feasible treatment method because it is less damaging and easy to operate with obvious results, but it is also necessary to strictly control the indications.