Sonographic Patterns of the Gallbladder in Acute Viral Hepatitis

✍ Scribed by Giulia Maresca; Anna Maria De Gaetano; Paola Mirk; Corrado Colagrande; Roberto Cauda; Giovanni Federico

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1984
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 525 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0091-2751
• DOI: 10.1002/jcu.1870120305

✦ Synopsis

Ultrasound was used for a serial evaluation of gallbladder modifications in 61 patients with acute viral hepatitis during both the acute phase of the illness and recovery. Most of the patients studied within 7 days from the onset of symptoms andlor jaundice showed sonographic abnormalities of the gallbladder (increased wall thickness, reduced volume, abnormal bile content). A normal ultrasound pattern of the gallbladder was progressively restored during the clinical recovery in most of the patients. A statistical correlation was found between the gallbladder wall thickness and the alanine transferase index. Indexing Words: Gallbladder -Viral hepatitis Gallbladder wall thickening -Echogenic bile Gallbladder wall thickening normally is detected by ultrasound examination in acute cholecystitis and is considered an important diagnostic sign of the Wall thickening also is present during physiological contraction of the gallbladder and in other extra-biliary pathological con-dition~.~-"

Recently, the occurrence of modifications of the gallbladder wall was reported by some investigators in patients with acute viral hepatitis. However, these alterations have not been throughly evaluated. To investigate this problem in greater depth, we studied the sonographic alterations of the gallbladder in patients with acute viral hepatitis in different phases of the disease.

Methods

We studied 72 consecutive patients admitted from May to September 1982 to our Infectious Diseases Department with suspected acute viral hepatitis. In all patients the clinical diagnosis was confirmed based on the usual epidemiological, clinical, and laboratory findings.

Eleven patients were excluded from the study

From the