Intraoperative ultrasound as an educational guide for laparoscopic biliary surgery

Table 1 Patient demographic data

	Before routine IOUS (1991-1997)	Routine IOUS (1998-2006)	P
Patient number (n)	368	276
Male/Female	140/228	107/169	0.85
Age (yr)	53.3 ± 13.9	57.1 ± 13.6	0.004
Operative indications, n (%)			0.73
Cholecystolithiasis	296 (80.4)	228 (82.6)
Cholecystocholedocholithiasis	39 (10.6)	23 (10.5)
Choledocholithiasis	7 (1.9)	4 (1.4)
Gallbladder polyp	22 (6.0)	11 (4.0)
Others1	4 (1.1)	4 (1.4)
Symptomatic gallstones, n (%)	284 (77.2)	220 (79.7)	0.44
Acute cholecystitis/cholangitis, n (%)	42 (11.4)	32 (11.6)	0.94
Bile duct diameter2 (mm)	8.9 ± 4.2	8.4 ± 3.6	0.12

¹Other benign processes including chronic cholecystitis and adenomyomatosis, which need whole biopsy of the gallbladder for suspected malignancy.

²Maximal dimension of the extrahepatic bile duct was measured by drip infusion cholangiography (51%), endoscopic retrograde cholangiography (35%), percutaneous transhepatic cholangiography (4%), magnetic resonance cholangiography (2%), and/or extracorporeal ultrasonography (8%).