Influence of bile duct stones on patient features and effect of endoscopic sphincterotomy on early outcome of edematous gallstone pancreatitis.

The objective of this study was to study the influence on patients' features and the effect on early outcome of the presence of bile duct stones and endoscopic sphincterotomy (EST), respectively, in the presence of edematous gallstone pancreatitis (GSP). It was a retrospective review of a patient series from 1981 through 1992 at a university teaching hospital. Altogether 96 patients aged 42 to 93 years (median 74 years) with edematous GSP were investigated by endoscopic retrograde cholangiography (ERC) in our department, 75 of whom underwent ERC at first admission. A total of 49 patients (group 1) had common bile duct (CBD) stones, and in 47 (group 2) no CBD stones were found. All patients in group 1 and 15 in group 2 underwent EST; 57 of the 75 patients had EST at first admission. The main outcome measures were pancreas-related complications and the length of the hospital stay. The early major complication and stone clearance rates of the EST procedure were 3.2% and 96%, respectively. Duration of symptoms prior to ERC was similar in groups 1 and 2 (median 5 and 8 days, respectively). Serum amylase activity was higher in group 2 patients than in group 1 patients [21-258 (median 75) microkat/L vs. 10-328 (median 48) microkat/L (p = 0.01)], but the length of hospital stay was similar: [4-39 (median 11) days vs. 4-19 (median 9) days (p = 0.05)]. Cholangitis at acute admission was more common in group 1 than in group 2 patients (31% vs. 7%; p = 0. 02), whereas a history of pancreatitis was noted more often in group 2 patients (49% vs. 8%; p< 0.001). ERC was done 1 to 18 days (median 2 days) and 1-16 days (median 5 days) (p = 0.02) after admission in groups 1 and 2 respectively, because of the more frequent cholangitis symptoms in group 1. It was concluded that the history and features at admission differed between patients with and without CBD stones at ERC done during an attack of GSP. Early EST had no influence on outcome or hospitalization. This study does not support routine EST in conjunction with mild GSP.