Sonographic findings in cases of missed gallstones

✍ Scribed by Chintapalli, Kedar N.; Ghiatas, Abraham A.; Chopra, Shailendra; Escobar, Beatrice; Esola, Christine C.; Dodd, Gerald D.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 251 KB
• Volume: 27
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0091-2751
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-0096(199903/04)27:3<117::aid-jcu3>3.0.co;2-u

✦ Synopsis

PURPOSE. We retrospectively evaluated sonographic findings in 946 cases of gallstones to determine whether the false-negative rate for gallstone detection by sonography has decreased as a result of technologic advances over the past 15 years.

Methods:

We reviewed preoperative sonographic reports, operative notes, and pathologic reports for 614 women and 332 men (ages 22-78 years) seen over a 2.5-year period and compared sonographic findings with surgical pathologic findings after cholecystectomy. sonograms for patients whose gallstones were missed on sonography were reviewed by 3 board-certified radiologists.

Results:

Preoperative sonography of the gallbladder accurately predicted the presence of gallstones in 934 cases (98.7%). gallstones were not identified by sonography in the remaining 12 cases. in those cases, sonography revealed polyps in 5, sludge in 5, sludge plus a polyp in 1, and neither stones nor polyps in 1. thus, the false-negative rate was 1.3%.

Conclusions:

Despite improvements in sonographic technology, detection of small gallstones remains difficult in some cases. adherent gallstones can mimic gallbladder polyps. our false-negative rate for detection of gallstones was no different from that in earlier studies.