Endoscopic ultrasound-guided treatments: Are we getting evidence based - a systematic review

The continued need to develop less invasive alternatives to surgical and radiologic interventions has driven the development of endoscopic ultrasound (EUS)-guided treatments. These include EUS-guided drainage of pancreatic fluid collections, EUS-guided necrosectomy, EUS-guided cholangiography and biliary drainage, EUS-guided pancreatography and pancreatic duct drainage, EUS-guided gallbladder drainage, EUS-guided drainage of abdominal and pelvic fluid collections, EUS-guided celiac plexus block and celiac plexus neurolysis, EUS-guided pancreatic cyst ablation, EUS-guided vascular interventions, EUS-guided delivery of antitumoral agents and EUS-guided fiducial placement and brachytherapy. However these procedures are technically challenging and require expertise in both EUS and interventional endoscopy, such as endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography and gastrointestinal stenting. We undertook a systematic review to record the entire body of literature accumulated over the past 2 decades on EUS-guided interventions with the objective of performing a critical appraisal of published articles, based on the classification of studies according to levels of evidence, in order to assess the scientific progress made in this field. (C) 2014 Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.