Education Topic: Gastrointestinal interventions

You are shown images of percutaneous gastrointestinal interventions to help you understand how they are done, their merits, and their demerits.

Percutaneous gastrostomy

What is percutaneous gastrostomy? Per is Latin for through. Cutaneous comes from cutis, Latin for skin. Gastro derives from gaster, Greek for stomach. Stomy is from stomatos, Greek for mouth. Thus, ‘percutaneous gastrostomy’ means making a hole (or opening/mouth) in the stomach through the skin. It is the deliberate construction of a track from the […]

Decompressing and stenting obstructed biliary ducts

What is biliary decompression and stenting? The word biliary derives from the small tubes or canals in the liver called bile ducts that drain bile — which the liver makes — into the gallbladder and the intestine. These tubes branch out like a tree, with their main stem or trunk running out of the liver […]