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Fate of Patients with Obstructive Jaundice

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Fate of Patients with Obstructive Jaundice ORIGINAL RESEARCH Fate of Patients with Obstructive Jaundice Einar Bjo¨rnsson, MD, PhD BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE: Systematic data are limited on the etiology and progno- Jonas Gustafsson, MD sis of unselected patients with obstructive jaundice (OJ). We aimed to review the Jakob Borkman, MD clinical features, etiology, and prognosis of patients with OJ. Anders Kilander, MD, PhD METHODS: All adult patients with bilirubin Ն 5.85 mg/dL (100 ␮mol/L) at a university hospital in Sweden in 2003-2004 were identified. Medical records from Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Gas- patients with OJ were reviewed. troenterology and Hepatology Sahlgrenska Univer- RESULTS: Seven hundred and forty-nine patients were identified, of whom 241 sity Hospital, Gothenburg Sweden (32%) had OJ (median age 71 years, 129 women). No one was lost to follow-up. The biliary obstruction of 154 patients (64%) was a result of a malignancy: 69 patients (46%) had pancreatic cancer, 44 (29%) had cholangiocarcinoma (CC), 5 (3%) had papilla vateri cancers, and 36 patients (23%) had other malignancies. Of the 87 patients with a benign obstruction, 57 (65%) had choledocholithiasis, 7 (8%) had biliary strictures, 6% had PSC, and the obstruction of 16 patients (20.7%) had other causes. A total of 115 of the 242 patients (48%) had abdominal pain associated with jaundice, whereas 52% had painless jaundice. Thirty-four percent of patients with a malignant obstruction had abdominal pain versus 71% of patients with a benign obstruction (P Ͻ .05). At the end of follow-up, only 5% (8 patients) with a malignant obstruction were alive versus 78% with a benign obstruction. CONCLUSIONS: Obstructive jaundice was the cause of the severe jaundice of one third of patients. Most cases of OJ were a result of a malignancy, which carried a very poor prognosis, with a 2-year mortality rate of 95%. Journal of Hospital Medicine 2008;3:117–123. © 2008 Society of Hospital Medicine. KEYWORDS: jaundice-carcinoma, gallstones, abdominal pain, prognosis. aundice is an important clinical entity associated with a wide Jvariety of differential diagnoses for which the prognosis differs depending on etiology. Recently, the etiological spectrum of un- selected patients with jaundice has been reported.1–2 Among pa- tients with cholestatic jaundice, abdominal ultrasound remains the primary investigation in order to distinguish extrahepatic bil- iary obstruction from intrahepatic disease. Recent studies of patients with jaundice have included a lim- ited number of patients with jaundice due to biliary obstruction and provided no analysis of the clinical characteristics and prog- nosis of these patients.1–2 Moreover, the prognosis of unselected patients with severe obstructive jaundice is unclear nowadays. The most common clinical presentation of malignant obstructive jaundice traditionally has been considered silent jaundice.3–5 However, the clinical features of malignant versus benign causes of jaundice have not been a focus of interest during the last decades, and it is not clear from the literature what proportion of patients with choledocholithiasis and jaundice present with silent Supported by the Faculty of Medicine, University of jaundice. Studies on the prognosis of patients with jaundice were Gothenburg. published more than 20 years ago, prior to major advances in © 2008 Society of Hospital Medicine 117 DOI 10.1002/jhm.272 Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). TABLE 1 Demographics of Major Diagnostic Groups, Investigations Performed in Each Group, and Treatment and Prognosis Pancreatic Cholangio- Other Papilla Biliary Gallstone Other cancer cancer cancers cancers strictures disease diagnoses PSC Total number 69 44 36 5 7 57 18 5 Age 73 (67-82) 67 (56-78) 67 (59-75) 79 (70-81) 80 (51-84) 69 (49-83) 72 (52-85) 61 (34-68) Sex-F/M 36/33 27/17 19/17 3/2 4/3 29/28 9/9 2/3 Surgery 10/69 10/44 1/36 3/5 0/7 21/57 4/18 1/5 Alive at follow-up 3/69 (4.3%) 2/44 (4.5%) 2/36 (5.6%) 1/5 (20%) 6/7 (86%) 46/57 (80.1%) 12/18 (66%) 4/5 (80%) Survival (days) 142 (58-267) 166 (80-300) 31 (18-73) 257 (130-380) 510 (455-900) 558 (424-665) 412 (103-558) 570 (319-676) The results for age and survival in days are shown as medians with interquartile ranges in parentheses. F, female, M, male. imaging modalities and endoscopic treatment.6–14 patient was discharged from the hospital, informa- Thus, we aimed to study the clinical features, etiol- tion about whether the patient was alive at the time ogy, and prognosis of patients presenting with ob- of follow-up was obtained from the Swedish Na- structive jaundice in the current era of improved tional Registration of Inhabitants; if the patient had imaging and noninvasive treatment. died outside the hospital, a death certificate was requested from the Cause of Death Register of the MATERIAL AND METHODS Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare. Pa- Over a 2-year period from the beginning of 2003 to tients were followed up in July 2005, providing a the end of 2004, all adult patients with s-bilirubin of follow-up period ranging from 6 months to 2.5 5.85 mg/dL (Ն100 ␮mol/l; reference value Ͻ 25 years. ␮mol/L) were identified at the clinical laboratory serving the Sahlgrenska University Hospital (Goth- Statistics enburg, Sweden), which analyzed the serum biliru- To test differences between groups, the Fisher exact bin of all patients in Gothenburg. Sahlgrenska Uni- test was used for dichotomous variables and the versity Hospital provides hospital services for all Mann-Whitney test for continuous variables. All inhabitants of the city and comprises 3 hospitals tests were 2-tailed and were conducted at a 5% (Sahlgrenska Hospital, O¨ stra Hospital, and Mo¨lndal significance level. The results are presented as me- Hospital) that serve as community hospitals as well dians and interquartile ranges (IQRs). as a university hospital. The Gothenburg metropol- itan area has 600,000 inhabitants. RESULTS The inclusion criteria for the study cohort were Patients s-bilirubin Ն 100 ␮mol/L at any point during the During the study period 749 patients were consec- 2-year period with evidence of dilated biliary ducts utively admitted to our hospital for severe jaundice on abdominal ultrasound. A retrospective review of with bilirubin Ն 5.85 mg/dL (Ն100 ␮mol/L). Among medical records was performed to retrieve informa- these patients, a total of 241 (32%) had ultrasound tion on the presence of abdominal pain associated evidence of obstructive jaundice at various levels of with jaundice, computerized tomography (CT) the biliary tree. In the total study group, the median and/or magnetic resonance cholangio-pancreatog- age was 71 years (IQR 59-81 years), with 129 women raphy (MRCP) testing, and s-AST, s-ALT, s-ALP, and and 112 men. The oldest patient was 94 years old bilirubin levels. The liver tests performed at the and the youngest 18 years. No patient was lost to time that s-bilirubin peaked during hospitalization follow-up. were analyzed. Information about whether abdom- inal pain was associated with jaundice at the time Causes of admission to the hospital, was obtained from The causes of the obstructive jaundice are shown in medical records. The etiology of and treatment for Table 1. Among the different types of malignancy the biliary obstruction were noted. Furthermore, causing obstructive jaundice, pancreatic cancer the prognosis of the patients was analyzed. If a and cholangiocarcinoma were the most common, 118 Journal of Hospital Medicine Vol3/No2/Mar/Apr 2008 TABLE 2 Other Malignancies Causing Both Obstructive Jaundice and Intrahepatic Jaundice Not Classified Elsewhere and Other Causes of Jaundice Not Classified Elsewhere Type of malignancy Number of patients Other cause of OJ not classified elsewhere Number of patients Colorectal cancer with liver metastases 9 Cholangitis 4 Liver metastases with unknown primary tumor 9 Papillary adenoma 4 Gastric cancer with liver metastases 5 Unknown cause 4 Small bowel cancer with liver metastases 2 Choledochal injury after cholecystectomy 2 Neuroendocrine tumor with liver metastases 2 Retroperitoneal fibrosis 1 Primary hepatocellular cancer 2 Mirizzis syndrome 1 Esophageal cancer with liver metastases 1 Chronic pancreatitis 1 Renal cancer with liver metastases 1 Duodenal diverticula 1 Lung cancer with liver metastases 1 Tuba uteri cancer with liver metastases 1 Prostate cancer with liver metastases 1 Chronic lymphatic leukemia with liver infiltrates 1 Liver cancer of unknown source 1 followed by the other malignancies category (Table TABLE 3 1). As shown in Table 2, a wide variety of other Demographics, Liver Test Results, Investigations Undertaken, and malignancies caused cases of biliary obstruction, Treatment of and Prognosis for patients with a Malignant Form of although most were a result of metastases from Obstructive Jaundice and a Nonmalignant Cause of Jaundice gastrointestinal malignancies. Gallstone disease Malignant Benign and biliary stricture were the most common benign obstruction obstruction causes. Less common causes are shown in Table 2. Patients with malignant versus benign obstructive Total number of patients 154 87 jaundice were similar in age (Table 3). However, Female/male 85/69 44/43 only 10 patients (6.5%) with malignant obstructive Age 72 (61-81) 69 (49-83) Abdominal pain at presentation 53/154 (34%)† 62/87 (71%) jaundice (OJ) were less than 50 years old, whereas AST 3.3 (2.3-5.1) 3.3 (2.1-6.4) 23 patients (26%) with benignly caused OJ were ALT 3.1 (2-6) 4.3 (2.6-9.1) under the age of 50. Among the patients with ma- ALP 9.9 (4.8-13.3)† 5.9 (3.7-8.5) lignancy, patients with pancreatic cancer were sig- Bilirubin 13.8 (10-20)† 7.1 (5.7-9.0) ‡ nificantly older than those with cholangiocarci- CT 125/154 (81%) 47/87 (54%) ϭ MRCP 47/154 (30%) 27/87 (31%) noma (P .04, Table 1).
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