Reply to McDonald and colleagues: "Can endoscopic ultrasound-guided gastroenterostomy be used as first line modality for endoscopic management of malignant gastric outlet obstruction?"

Abstract
We would like to thank Dr. McDonald and colleagues for their comments on our manuscript “Patency of endoscopic ultrasound-guided gastroenterostomy in the treatment of malignant gastric outlet obstruction” [1]. The authors raised several points, the first of which was regarding issues about the higher adverse event (AE) rate reported in our series compared with previous reports: 1) whether these rates were higher in earlier years; 2) whether AEs decreased over time; and 3) whether there was a substantial difference between the balloon-assisted technique and the direct technique. Publication Date: 19 February 2021 (online) © 2021. The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commecial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) Georg Thieme Verlag KG Rüdigerstraße 14, 70469 Stuttgart, Germany