The Impact of Body Mass Index as a Predictive Factor of Steatocholecystitis

Obesity is a chronic inflammatory condition and is strongly linked to raised levels of pro-inflammatory factors and may lead to fatty infiltration of multiple internal organs including the gallbladder and liver, causing organ dysfunction. This study was performed to evaluate the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and acute and chronic cholecystitis, and cholecystitis and cholesterolosis. We investigated the clinical implications of BMI as a predictive factor of cholesterol associated cholecystitis.

This retrospective study covered the period from January 2007 to December 2011, we included 1,158 patients who had cholecystectomy. We excluded patients with gallbladder cancer, adenomyomatosis, and cholesterolosis without cholecystitis. Finally, we investigated the data of a total of 1,109 patients with cholecystitis. Laboratory test results and clinical data such as age, sex, BMI, height, weight and underlying diseases were examined. We retrospectively investigated acute and chronic cholecysti tis, cholesterol polyps, and other gallbladder diseases such as gallbladder cancer and adenomyomatosis according to the histopathologic findings.

There was a significant difference of BMI between patients with cholecystitis with cholesterolosis and without cholesterolosis (P = 0.001). Among patients who had cholecystitis with cholesterolosis, the BMI was 25.2 kg/m2. Among patients with cholecystitis without cholesterolosis, the average BMI was 24.3 kg/m2. Weight, systolic blood pressure, platelet count, glucose, triglyceride, and LDL-cholesterol were different between the groups above (P < 0.05). However, there was no significant difference in BMI between acute and chronic cholecystitis (P = 0.05).

BMI was associated with steatocholecystitis. However, we cannot predict whether cholecystitis is acute or chronic according to the BMI. We suggest that BMI can be used as one of the predictive factors of steatocholecystitis for obese patients.