Abstract

Sphincter of Oddi (SO) dysfunction is a recognised cause of postcholecystectomy pain, but a difficult condition to diagnose, requiring endoscopic biliary manometry (EBM) to confirm sphincter motor abnormalities. We have assessed quantitative cholescintigraphy in 10 postcholecystectomy (PC) patients with clinical and manometric evidence of SO dysfunction, 10 PC patients with non-biliary type abdominal pain and 10 asymptomatic PC volunteers acting as controls to determine its value as a non-invasive screening test. Quantitative 99mTc-DISIDA scans lasted 60 minutes, activity/time curves being created by computer analysis using the entire hepatobiliary system as region-of-interest (ROI). Scintigraphic analysis demonstrated that the time in minutes to maximum counts (Tmax) was significantly increased in the SO dysfunction group compared with the non-biliary pain group and the asymptomatic volunteers (p less than 0.001). The per cent of biliary tracer emptied was also significantly less in the SO dysfunction group than either of the other groups at both 45 minutes (p less than 0.01) and 60 minutes (p less than 0.02). We conclude that quantitative cholescintigraphy may be a valuable non-invasive screening test in clinically suspected SO dysfunction.