Correlation Between Preoperative Power Doppler Sonography and Intraoperative Findings - Postoperative Outcomes of Chronic and Acute Cholecystitis Patients: Prospective Clinical Study

Gray-scale sonography is generally considered as a first-line diagnostic tool for patients with suspected gallbladder (GB) diseases. Once the gallstone is detected in a patient who is complaining abdominal pain in the right upper quadrant, the second concern is to differential diagnosis, biliary colic or acute cholecystitis. Certain diagnosis of acute cholecystitis is important, because of these two entity require different treatments. Gray-scale sonography has proven to be a valuable imaging technique in differential diagnosis for acute or chronic cholecystitis (1). In the presence of gallstones, sonographic findings such as GB wall thickening and the Murphy's sign has 90% sensitivity for the diagnosis of acute cholecystitis (2). On the other hand, abdominal pain and accompanying GB wall thickening can be seen in different clinical scenarios such as, pancreatitis, hepatitis, cirrhosis, and congestive heart failure. Thus, the specificity of these sonographic findings are not as high as their sensitivity. To eliminate this diagnostic concern, the need for correlation between diagnostic tool and disease physiopathology was realized. The GB wall is thickened and the vascularisation is increased in acute cholecystitis, but in the chronic cholecystitis the thickening of the GB wall is caused by fibrosis. This pathologic difference is to key point of distinguishing between acute and chronic cholecystitis. Determining the vascularisation of the GB wall with Doppler sonography was showed valuable diagnostic benefits, and the diagnostic superiority was obtained especially with power Doppler sonography (3).

Today, laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) has become the gold standard treatment for benign biliary diseases. Although, the laparoscopic approach to acute cholecystitis have a lot of advantages, such as; less postoperative pain, shorter hospital stay and better cosmetic results, timing of the operation and intraoperative findings of GB wall inflammation and adhesions are critical for performing a safe cholecystectomy. The risk of bleeding and bile duct injury are significantly increases in the presence of severe inflammation and adhesions (4). These findings may lead surgeon to convert LC to an open cholecystectomy.

In theory, increased vascularity of GB wall could be associated with intraoperative findings, such as, GB wall inflammation and accompanying adhesions. There are not enough reports in the literature describing the correlation between GB wall vascularity and operative findings according to adhesion scoring scale. In this prospective clinical study, we aimed to highlight the correlation between preoperative power Doppler sonography detected GB wall vascularity and intraoperative findings - postoperative outcomes of chronic and acute cholecystitis patients.