Percutaneous transhepatic use of rigid bronchial forceps as bailout in difficult biliary stent retrieval.

Endoscopic retrieval of embedded, proximally migrated, or fractured plastic biliary stents may be technically challenging and sometimes unsuccessful. Percutaneous transhepatic techniques have previously been described to assist in such challenging cases. Here in, we describe a difficult case in which all commonly described endoscopic and percutaneous techniques failed to retrieve a proximally migrated, fractured, and looped plastic biliary stent. We finally successfully retrieved the plastic forceps after off-label utilization of rigid bronchial forceps via a percutaneous transhepatic approach. We describe the technique utilized in detail and this appears to be the first description of this off-label use in this challenging scenario.

Radiation-induced insufficiency fracture of the femur 18 years after radiation therapy.

Advances in oncologic treatment have improved survival rates, allowing late effects of radiotherapy to become more prevalent. Our patient, an 82-year-old woman with a remote history of right thigh basal cell carcinoma treated with resection and radiation therapy 18 years prior, presented with severe right thigh pain and inability to bear weight as she had suffered a femur fracture after a fall from standing. Initial imaging was suspicious for pathologic fracture secondary to malignancy due to imaging findings and because radiation-induced fractures have rarely been reported beyond 44 months from treatment. However, upon further imaging, evidence pointed to radiation-induced osteonecrosis as the mechanism for her insufficiency fracture. This case highlights the permanent deleterious effects of radiation therapy on bone, and the prudence of considering radiation-induced osteonecrosis as a mechanism of injury in low-energy trauma even long after radiation therapy. In addition, the case serves to review the natural history of irradiated bone injury and pertinent imaging findings.