[Cholelithiasis after total gastrectomy for gastric cancer]

After gastric resection for peptic ulcer and total gastrectomy for Zollinger-Ellison syndrome, there is an increased prevalence of cholelithiasis. In order to assess whether this increased prevalence also exists after total gastrectomy for cancer, we evaluated the rate of cholelithiasis (echographic diagnosis) both before and after this operation. Between 1980 and 1990, 89 patients underwent total gastrectomy for cancer in the Surgical Department of our Institute. The pre-operative prevalence of gallstones was 5% in the males and 13.8% in the females. Seventy-four of the eighty-nine patients (83%) were examined post-operatively (7 patients with pre-operative cholelithiasis, 3 who died during the post-operative stay and 5 lost to follow-up were excluded from the study). The median post-operative follow-up was 24 months (range 3-115 months). The post-operative prevalence of cholelithiasis in the 74 patients was 39.6% in the males and 19% in the females. We also calculated the expected frequency of gallstones in both the pre- and post-operative groups from prevalence data in the population of the city where our Institute is based (taken from an echographic survey). We then compared the observed frequency of cholelithiasis with the expected frequency and we found that the difference in pre-operative frequencies, both in the males and females, was not statistically significant (p > 0.05). The same was true of the post-operative frequencies in the females (p = 0.48), but in the males there was a statistically significant difference between the observed frequency of cholelithiasis and that expected after total gastrectomy (p < 0.0001).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)