Strictures and Injuries of Bile Ducts

This study of benign strictures of the common and hepatic bile ducts is based on eighty consecutive cases in which I have performed operations at the Mayo Clinic during the past fifteen years. The follow-up study of these cases has been carried out by Dr. Everett B. Lewis,1my first assistant. One of my former first assistants, Dr. K. K. Nygaard (now of Oslo, Norway), and Dr. Shelden and I summarized the results of fifty-one of these cases in 1937.2 There were ten deaths in the series of eighty cases, a mortality of 12.5 per cent (table 1). In but twelve of the cases (15 per cent) was the stricture localized and small enough so that it could be excised and the ends of the common bile duct anastomosed together. Fifty-eight per cent of these patients have been well since their operation (table 2), three have been well