CT cholangiography: Advantages and disadvantages compared with MR cholangiography in the evaluation of the biliary tract following liver transplantation

✍ Scribed by Ann S. Fulcher

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 45 KB
• Volume: 10
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1527-6465
• DOI: 10.1002/lt.20207

✦ Synopsis

T he past decade has seen advances in surgical tech- niques that have improved the outcomes of patients undergoing liver transplantation. Occurring parallel with these advances have been refinements in radiological techniques such as computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance that allow for rapid, accurate evaluation of patients both prior to and following liver transplantation. In the article by Miller et al., published in this issue of Liver Transplantation, the authors describe their preliminary experience using CT cholangiography for detecting and excluding biliary tract complications after liver transplantation.

Prior to the past decade, depiction of the biliary tract was achieved only by invasive procedures such as endoscopic retrograde cholangiography (ERC) and percutaneous transhepatic cholangiography. While these procedures offer the advantage of high-resolution imaging of the biliary tract and provide not only diagnostic information but also a means of instituting therapy, they are associated with complications such as bleeding, infection, and, in the case of ERC, pancreatitis and bowel perforation. An added limitation of ERC is that