Suspected common bile duct stones: Which test is best?

The American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE) guidelines for common bile duct (CBD) stone management were created to risk stratify patients into low, intermediate, and high-risk groups to optimize interventions. Low-risk patients typically proceed to cholecystectomy with or without Intra-operative cholangiogram (IOC) whereas high-risk patients typically proceed to common duct clearance. The optimum management of intermediate-risk patients still widely varies. This study aims to characterize the use of MRCP, IOC, and endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) in patients with intermediate risk of CBD stones.

This is a retrospective analysis of data from the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma (EAST) Retained Common Bile Duct stone database comprised of deidentified data and outcomes of patients prospectively admitted with suspected CBD stones and/or acute biliary pancreatitis from 12 US medical centers between 2016 and 2019. Analysis of the testing characteristics sensitivity (SN), specificity (SP), and predictive values (positive (PPV) and negative (NPV)) were calculated for MRCP, EUS, and IOC based on definitive identification of CBD stones.

736 patients met inclusion criteria. 521 met the ASGE intermediate risk of choledocholithiasis criteria. 208/521 (39.9%) underwent pre-op MRCP, 44/521 (8.4%) underwent pre-op EUS, and 238/521 (45.7%) underwent IOC.

There is little role for MRCP for ASGE intermediate-risk patients as this modality has both lower sensitivity and specificity than EUS and IOC. When available, either EUS or IOC is the preferred option for diagnostic clarification to identify the choledocholithiasis in this group.