[Quantification of gallbladder kinetics in hypothyroidism using a simple sonographic method]

In 3 patients with hypothyroidism we tried to quantify the kinetics of the gallbladder using a simple sonographic method. The width of the gallbladder was found to be a good parameter for this purpose after we had found a good correlation between the relative decrease of the width with the relative decrease of the plane and the volume in a control group of 7 persons (R = 0.80, p less than 0.05, R = 0.85, p less than 0.05 respectively). After therapy, the speed of decrease of the width was 8-fold after cholagogue (p less than 0.05) and the increase of the shortening fraction was 13-fold (p less than 0.05). It was concluded that the width of the gallbladder in the examined group of patients reflects thyroid hormone application very sensitively. In view of the small number of patients this finding must be confirmed in a study involving a larger group of patients.