For patients at intermediate risk for having a common duct stone, initial cholecystectomy resulted in a shorter hospital stay, fewer invasive procedures, and no increase in morbidity, compared with the standard approach of doing a common duct exploration via endoscopic ultrasound followed by (if indicated) endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography and cholecystectomy, according to a report published online July 8 in JAMA.
At present there are no specific guidelines as to the initial treatment approach for patients who present to the emergency department with suspected choledocholithiasis and who are at intermediate risk for retaining a common duct stone. In contrast, guidelines recommend initial laparoscopic cholecystectomy for patients at low risk for a retained common duct stone and preoperative endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) followed by cholecystectomy for those at high risk, said Dr. Pouya Iranmanesh of the divisions of digestive surgery and transplant surgery, Geneva University Hospital, and his associates.
They performed a single-center randomized clinical trial comparing these two approaches in 100 intermediate-risk patients who presented to the emergency department during a 2-year period with sudden abdominal pain in the right upper quadrant and/or epigastric region, which was associated with elevated liver enzymes and the presence of a gallstone on ultrasound. Patients were included in the study whether they had associated acute cholecystitis or not and were randomly assigned to undergo either initial emergency laparoscopic cholecystectomy with intraoperative cholangiogram (50 patients) or initial common duct ultrasound exploration followed by (if indicated) ERCP and cholecystectomy (50 control subjects).
The median length of hospital stay was significantly shorter for the initial-cholecystectomy group (5 days) than for the control group (8 days), and the total number of procedures (endoscopic ultrasounds, magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatographies, and ERCPs) also was significantly smaller (25 vs. 71). In particular, the number of endoscopic ultrasounds was only 10 in the initial-cholecystectomy group, compared with 54 in the control group. All 50 patients in the control group (100%) underwent at least one common duct investigation exclusive of the intraoperative cholangiogram, compared with only 20 patients (40%) in the initial-cholecystectomy group, the investigators reported (JAMA 2014 July 8 [doi:10.1001/jama.2014.7587]).
The two study groups had similar rates of conversion to laparotomy, similar operation times, a similar number of failed intraoperative cholangiograms, and similar results on quality of life measures at 1 month and 6 months after hospital discharge. The rates of complications (8% vs 14%) and of severe complications (4% vs 8%) were approximately twice as high in the control group as in the initial-cholecystectomy group.
Since 30 (60%) of the patients in the initial-cholecystectomy group never needed any common duct investigation, it follows that many intermediate-risk patients in real-world practice are undergoing unnecessary common duct procedures. A policy of performing a cholecystectomy first ensures that only patients who retain common duct stones will undergo such invasive procedures, Dr. Iranmanesh and his associates said.
Dr. Iranmanesh and his associates reported no relevant financial disclosures.