Combined endoscopic and surgical approach to primary gallstone disease

Over a 5-year period, 443 patients were treated for primary gallstone disease. There were 333 patients with negative preoperative findings in the common bile ducts (CBD) on sonography and liver enzymes estimation who underwent cholecystectomy without endoscopic retrograde cholangiography (ERC). Thirty-eight surgical explorations of the choledochus were necessary, and in 11 patients a second intervention (endoscopically) had to be performed. There were 110 patients with signs of stone formation in the bile ducts. These patients were submitted to examination of the CBD by ERC. Choledocholithiasis was found in 67 patients; in 47, endoscopic papillotomy and stone extraction were successful. On 7 occasions it was insufficient and in 13 patients it was not attempted due to the size of the stone. One second intervention (endoscopically) had to be performed in this group of patients. The sonographical and laboratory suspicion of bile duct-stones could be disproved in 43 patients. In these cases, the preoperative ERC was negative. We therefore had information on the bile duct system preoperatively and no surgical bile duct exploration was necessary for diagnosis. Thirty-eight of 333 patients (11.4%) had a false-negative and 43 of 110 (39%) a false-positive sonographical or laboratory diagnosis. This shows that there is no other preoperative diagnostic test other than ERC for the precise preoperative evaluation of common bile duct stones. Morbidity, mortality and the rate of choledochus revision (especially negative explorations) can be reduced by preoperative endoscopic bile duct stone removal.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)