Short- and long-term outcomes of choledochojejunostomy during pancreaticoduodenectomy and total pancreatectomy: interrupted suture versus continuous suture

Purpose Choledochojejunostomy can be performed with either interrupted sutures (IS) or continuous sutures (CS). No reports have compared the short- or long-term patient outcomes resulting from these two methods. Methods A total of 228 consecutive patients who underwent pancreaticoduodenectomy or total pancreatectomy were prospectively enrolled in this study. All patients were alternately (by turns) assigned to the IS and CS groups. Among those patients, 161 patients who received regular postoperative follow-up for more than 2 years were eligible for analysis (IS group, n = 81; CS group, n = 80). A comparative analysis was performed between these groups regarding short-term (e.g., anastomotic leakage) and long-term complications (e.g., anastomotic stricture), time required to complete the anastomosis, and cost. Results The incidence of anastomotic leakage and anastomotic stricture was comparable between the IS and CS groups (1.2% vs. 1.2%, p = 0.993; 8.6% vs. 6.2%, p = 0.563). The groups did not differ regarding the incidence of any short- or long-term complications. The time required to complete the anastomosis in the IS group was 27.0 ± 6.6 min, compared with 16.2 ± 5.0 min in the CS group ( p