Therapeutic Plan for Benign Polypoid Lesion of Gallbladder

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: Since the laparoscopic cholecystectomy became an usual procedure, operative indications of the gallbladder polyps have had the tendency to enlarge. There are no precise management plan about the gallbladder polyps which is not included in the accepted operative indications. Therefore a management plan may be required for the patients who has gallbladder polyps which is not accepted operative indications. METHODS: We retrospectively analysed 106 patients with gallbladder polyps who were diagnosed preoperatively by ultrasound and CT from January 1991 to January 2005. Our operation indications are polyp above 10 mm, symptomatic polyp, sessile polyp, coincidence of stone, focal thickening of gallbladder wall, diffuse wall thickening and detection during other operations. The gallbladder polyps which were suspected to the gallbladder cancer strongly on radiologic studies and polyps above 20 mm size were excluded in this studies. RESULTS: Among the 106 patients, 87 patients underwent operation, and polypoid lesions disappeared during the follow-up period in 3 patients, and 16 patients are on regular follow up. Fifty-six cases received operation with accepted operative indications, and the thirty-one cases underwent operation by the patient's demand. Two groups showed significant difference in true polyp on pathological diagnosis (P < 0.001). There was 16.07% true polyp in opertive indication based 56 patients and no true polyp in patient's demanded 31 cases. The pathologic diagnoses were cholesterol polyp in 27 patients (87.15%), no polyp in 2 patients, adenomatous hyperplasia in 2 patients. The correlation of the polyp size and pathologic diagnosis was an inverse relation to the polyp size and incidence of pseudopolyp (P=0.014). CONCLUSION: We propose that the 6-month-interval follow-up observation is fully safe for polyps sized below 10 mm and not included in accepted operative indications.