[The usefulness of the emergency hepatobiliary scintigraphy to rule out acute cholecystitis--43 patients report].

ABSTRACT

We studied emergency hepatobiliary scintigraphy in the 43 patients to rule out acute cholecystitis. After injection of 185-222 MBq (5-6 mCi) of 99mTc-EHIDA or 99mTc-HIDA, serial static scintigraphic images were obtained up to 7 hours in maximum. Of 43 patients in this study, 20 had a normal scan and finally in all of them cholecystitis was ruled out. Of the 43 patients, 14 had an abnormal scan (nonvisualized gall bladder). In 10 of them the diagnosis of acute cholecystitis was confirmed after emergency cholecystectomy. The other 9 patients of 43 had an incomplete scan mainly due to liver dysfunction. Four of them had acute cholecystitis in the cholecystectomy. These results indicate that acute cholecystitis can be excluded by the findings of gall bladder visualization in hepatobiliary scintigram. We concluded that emergency hepatobiliary scintigraphy is very useful to rule out acute cholecystitis.