Comparative diagnostic value of echography and oral radiologic examination of the gallbladder in relation to surgical findings

For nearly 60 years, since it was introduced by Graham and Cole (1924), oral cholecystography (OCG) has been used as the imaging technique of choice in investigation of gallbladder disorders. Recently, the future of OCG has come into doubt, principally as a result of ultrasonography, with the advent of high-resolution real-time scanning. Stones are seen as echoes within the lumen of the gallbladder and are associated with an acoustic shadow, findings which are highly specific. On this basis, to evaluate the accuracy of ultrasonography in detecting cholelithiasis, the A. have performed by real-time cholecystosonography 60 patients with not diagnostic OCG in a group of 546 patients affected by gallbladder diseases. Our results have confirmed that sonography revealed 4 normal gallbladders, 51 gallstones and 1 primary gallbladder cancer, with 5 cases of false positive. The true false negative rate has been difficult to determine, as surgery is usually not performed after a negative study. The accuracy of cholecystosonography for gallstone diagnosis was found to be 88,1% for all three Crade's categories.