Gallbladder wall thickening: A frequent finding in various nonbiliary disorders—a prospective ultrasonographic study
✍ Scribed by Martin Wegener; Gereon Börsch; Jost Schneider; Bernd Wedmann; Ralf Winter; Johannes Zacharias
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1987
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 481 KB
- Volume
- 15
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0091-2751
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✦ Synopsis
A comprehensive prospective ultrasonographic study was performed in 93 patients to investigate gallbladder wall thickness and gallbladder volumes in various nonbiliary disease states. Without changes in gallbladder volume, mean gallbladder wall thickness was significantly increased ( p < 0.01) in patients with liver cirrhosis, viral hepatitis, chronic congestive heart failure, hypoalbuminemia, and chronic renal failure ( p < 0.05) but not in patients with diabetes mellitus ( n = 14) as compared to a control group. The present study confirms that a variety of nonbiliary disorders are associated with significant thickening of gallbladder walls and that this finding is not caused by incomplete gallbladder contraction. Indexing Words: Gallbladder wall thickening * Gallbladder volume * Hypoalbuminemia * Liver cirrhosis * Viral hepatitis -Heart and renal failure
In patients with gallbladder calculi, gallbladder wall thickness as determined by ultrasound correlates significantly with the degree of gallbladder inflammation as assessed by histological anal-~s i s . l -~ However, this finding is not specific for primary gallbladder disease.* Several ultrasonic studies have reported gallbladder wall thickening in patients with various nonbiliary conditions including alcoholic liver disease, ascites, portal venous hypertension, hypoalbuminemia, hepatitis, chronic heart failure, and renal insufficiency without intrinsic gallbladder d i s e a ~e . ~, ~. ~ It has to be kept in mind that gallbladder contraction, as has been said to occur in the initial phase of acute viral he pa ti ti^,^,' is by itself associated with increased gallbladder wall thi~kness.~ A drawback of previous studies has thus been the fact that no comment was made on corresponding gallbladder volumes. We therefore initiated a comprehensive prospective study to assess gallbladder wall thickness and gallbladder volume simultaneously in From the Department of Medicine, Ruhr-