[Sonomorphology of stress cholecystitis]

Acute acalculous cholecystitis is a well-known complication in postoperative and particularly in severely traumatized unit patients. All that is known so far of "stress"-cholecystitis is based on episodic case reports and retrospective analyses. An incidence between 0.5 and 4.2%, a complicated clinical course and a lethality up to 75% have been reported. In intensive-care unit patients a clinical diagnosis of suspected acute cholecystitis is rarely reliable; greater reliance is placed on the ultrasound findings as seen in our prospective study. According to the literature, the established ultrasound criteria of cholecystitis include: hydrops, thickening of the gallbladder wall, sludge, subserosal oedema, pericholecystic fluid collection and fragmentation of the gallbladder wall. Other factors, however, may also lead to morphological changes of the gallbladder, and hence there is no agreement about the definitive sonomorphology of this entity. The variability of sonomorphological criteria is reviewed and compared to the results of a series of our own.