Preoperative assessment for laparoscopic cholecystectomy: feasibility of using spiral computed tomography

The authors investigated the preoperative feasibility of using spiral computed tomography (SCT) after intravenous infusion cholangiography (IVC-SCT) for laparoscopic cholecystectomy.

In laparoscopic cholecystectomy, the aberrant or unusual anatomy of the bile duct and severe inflammation or adhesions around the gallbladder sometimes require a conversion to open surgery.

Laparoscopic cholecystectomies (LC's) were attempted on 440 patients, and preoperative IVC-SCT also was attempted in all of these patients. Using this spiral scanning technique, the bile ducts, cystic duct, and gallbladder were assessed for contour abnormalities, relative position, and filling defects. Forty-seven patients were diagnosed with having stones in their common bile duct or common hepatic duct.

Three-hundred eighty-seven patients out of the 440 patients (88.0%) who were subjected to IVC-SCT had the length and course of their cystic duct successfully determined. Anomalous unions of the cystic duct were seen in 59 (15.2%) of 387 patients with respect to the operative findings, and 48 of 440 patients (10.9%) had severe adhesions to Calot's triangle and the surrounding tissues. In these 48 patients, 45 patients (94%) had a nonvisualized cystic duct on IVC-SCT. The preoperative assessment of the feasibility (dense adhesions obscuring Calot's triangle) of using IVC-SCT demonstrated that the sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy were 93%, 98%, and 94%, respectively. Five patients had to be converted to open surgery, and the overall morbidity rates for patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy was 0.9% (4 of 440).

The most important factor in assessing the feasibility of using laparoscopic cholecystectomy is not the nonvisualized gallbladder, but the nonvisualized cystic duct on IVC-SCT. IVC-SCT may be of benefit to those patients scheduled to undergo laparoscopic cholecystectomy.