A novel timesaving and semiquantitative method for radionuclide hepatobiliary scintigraphy for suspected biliary...

To optimize the performance of the hepatobiliary scintigraphy (HS) for suspected biliary atresia (BA) using a timesaving and semiquantitative method without a loss in diagnostic accuracy.

A retrospective analysis of 185 patients with persistent jaundice who underwent surgery were included. According to the surgical evaluation and pathological diagnosis, patients were divided into a BA group (99 cases) and an infant hepatitis syndrome (IHS) group (86 cases). 99mTc-labeled diethylacetanilide-iminodiacetic acid (99mTc-EHIDA) HS was performed before surgery. The average intestinal radioactivity uptake value minus the background average of radioactivity uptake value at 6 h after label injection (abbreviated as 6-h I-B) was calculated and the difference in 6-h I-B between the two groups was evaluated. The difference in diagnostic efficacy between 6-h I-B and the conventional 24-h HS in BA was also evaluated.

A significant difference in 6-h I-B between the two groups was found (t=-5.975, P<0.001) and a high level of efficacy of 6-h I-B in the diagnosis of BA was detected. The sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) of 6-h I-B in the diagnosis of BA were 87.88%, 47.67%, 69.19%, 65.91%, and 77.36% respectively, while the corresponding parameters of the 24-h hepatobiliary imaging were 90.91%, 36.05%, 65.41%, 62.07%, and 77.50% respectively, with no significant difference between these values in the diagnosis of BA.

HS plays an important role in the diagnosis of infantile jaundice due to conjugated hyperbilirubinemia. The timesaving and semiquantitative method of the 6-h hepatobiliary static imaging showed the same high sensitivity and NPV of the conventional 24-h HS in preventing unnecessary surgery. In the setting of suspected BA, imaging resource utilization could be improved via reducing the acquisition time and simplifying the examination process. The 24-h delay in imaging was considered unnecessary because it was not significantly superior.