[Biliary diseases among patients in an infection clinic]

The result of the analysis of dismissal diagnoses of patients who were admitted to the clinic for infectious diseases of the district hospital St. Georg Leipzig with suspicion of hepatitis was that in about 20% of the patients a benign disease of the biliary ducts was present. The false admission of cases with diseases of the biliary ducts into the clinic for infectious diseases was doen not only --as it were to be expected-- by general practitioners which had no laboratory capacities, but above all by specialists of larger outpatients-departments who had performed laboratory examinations and also by larger hospitals for internal or surgical diseases. Main cause of this unfavourable result is the relative overvaluation of an established aminotransferase activity. In 59% of our cases the correct diagnostic coordination could have been possible already in the basal diagnostics, taking into consideration the high value of the anamnesis.