Study of serum lipase, alpha-amylase and pancreatic amylose in gall-stone diseases.

Silent gall-stone causes significant morbidity and mortality and its incidence in India as well as in whole world is on the rise. It has positive correlation with development of carcinoma gall bladder. So far no predictive study has been done to show its correlation with biochemical markers. The present study has been aimed to establish whether simple enzymatic markers can predict association with cholelithiasis. Study group has been selected from the patients attending general surgery OPD of a tertiary healthcare centre with complaints of vague abdominal pain, flatulence and dyspepsia. A total of 61 cases (male = 18, female = 43) were studied and data matched with age and sex matched control. The biochemical markers studied are serum alkaline phosphatase, serum lipase, serum alpha-amylase and serum pancreatic amylase. Patients with obstructive cholelithiasis, duct stones, pancreatic insufficiency and malignancy are excluded from the study. The results were analysed by Student's t-test. Alkaline phosphatase in all the above mentioned cases was not significantly different from the control group (40 female, 21 male healthy individuals). A significant association was found out with serum alpha-amylase (p < 0.05) and a highly significant association was found out with pancreatic amylase (p < 0.001). Results of serum lipase however were inconclusive (p = 0.1). Pancreatic amylase can be estimated at a reasonable cost and costwise may prove to be a marker of gall-stone diseases which are in many cases silent preventing further complications and chances of Malignancy especially where alkaline phosphatase isinconclusive.