Background
Cholecystectomy is one of the most commonly performed surgical procedures. However, it may result in some unpleasant conditions such as bile duct injury (BDI), bile leak, and vessel injury. Subtotal cholecystectomy (SC), which has been introduced as an alternative method for reducing the complication rates, has been reported to have lower risk of BDI when compared to total cholecystectomy.
This study aimed to evaluate the indications for SC, its early and late complications and their management, and the risk factors affecting the bile leak.
Methods
Fifty‐seven patients who underwent SC were included in the study, and their medical records were retrospectively reviewed.
Results
Thirty‐three patients were male (57.9%) and the mean age was 64.84 ± 11.35 (range: 29‐86). All patients had at least one episode of cholecystitis. Forty‐seven (82.5%) patients underwent surgery under emergency conditions. Postoperative bile leak/fistula, surgical site infection, and fluid collection were developed in 12 (21.1%), eight (14%), and six (10.5%) patients, respectively. Leaving the remnant tissue pouch open, presence of comorbidity and emergency operative condition were found to increase the risk of leak development (P < .001).
During the average follow‐up of 49 months (range: 13‐98), symptomatic choledocholithiasis, symptomatic gallstones in the remnant tissue, and incisional hernia were detected within the first year of surgery in three (5.3%), four (7%), and seven (12.3%) patients, respectively.
Conclusions
Although SC is not an equivalent to total cholecystectomy, its vital benefit of lowering the risk of BDI should be considered in difficult cases.
Hepaticojejunostomy is a challenging and complex procedure to be done with confidence in conditions that contain a large number of segmental bile ducts. Portoenterostomy can be defined as the joining of multiple bile ducts into a single cavity using segmenter bile duct ends, stents, and surrounding connective tissues. During surgery, in cases with advanced stage biliary tract tumors that cannot be performed hepatectomy, after aggressive dissections to provide a negative surgical margin, a large number of segmental bile ducts can be revealed and needs to ensure the continuity of bile flow. Here, our clinical series of portoenterostomy (PE) in which we applied in patients who had aggressive hilar dissection and resection for hilar cholangiocarcinomas and biliary tract tumors were discussed. The study included 15 patients who underwent PE for biliary tract tumors and hilar cholangiocarcinomas between 2015 and 2019. Six of the patients had a tumor-negative surgical margin, with a mean follow-up of 14.4 months (range 2 to 28 months). Nine of the patients had a tumorpositive surgical margin, with a mean follow-up of 7.7 months (range 2 to 17 months). Portoenterostomy instead of hepaticojejunostomy in small and multiple biliary radicles and bile duct cancers has been successfully performed in 15 patients of bile duct cancer and Klatskin tumor. In the presence of active inflammation, fibrosis, major bile duct trauma, and thin bile duct radicles, this method, which is described in detail, provides an excellent salvage surgical procedure with less morbidity.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.