[Incidence of gallbladder stones in renal transplant recipients]

Gallbladder stone is one of the major cause of morbidity in adults. Renal transplantation has been found to increase the risk of gallbladder stone formation. The real incidence of gallbladder stones in renal transplant recipients is not exactly known. We performed this study to identify the risk factors for cholecystolithiasis.

We compared the prevalence of gallbladder stone in 222 renal transplantation patients with that in 222 age and sex matched controls. Patients who had chronic liver disease, renal disease, and diabetes were excluded from the control group.

In our study, the incidence of gallbladder stones is 8.6% (19/222 patients) in renal transplantation patients, which was significantly higher than 3.60% (8/222 control) in the control group (p=0.029). In the most of our renal transplantation patients, cholecystolithiasis was asymptomatic. We did not find a difference in age, sex, duration after transplantation, causes of renal failure, resistance index between patients with and without gallbladder stones in renal transplantation patients.

Our results suggest that the incidence of gallbladder stones is higher in renal transplant recipients than non-transplant population in Korea. Further studies will be needed to focus the factors contributing to the gallbladder stone formation after renal transplantation, especially in regard to immunosuppressive drugs.