Usefulness of abdominal ultrasound and magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography (MRCP) in the diagnosis of hepatobiliary disorders: A comparative study

Abstract

Objective: The aim of this work was to compare the usefulness and sensitivity of ultrasonography (US) and magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography (MRCP) in the diagnosis of different hepatobiliary disorders.

Methods: The study included 65 patients with various hepatobiliary disorders such as cholelithiasis, post cholecystectomy complications, neoplastic, inflammatory and developmental conditions of the pancreatico-biliary system. All patients underwent an initial abdominal US followed by MRCP, allowing a direct comparison of the results obtained by these two modalities. Correlation was also made with available clinical records, other imaging modalities, intraoperative findings and histopathology results.

Results: While both modalities proved equally sensitive in revealing developmental and inflammatory diseases
of the pancreatico-biliary system (values between 90%-100%), MRCP showed a higher sensitivity for detecting pancreatico-biliary tumors (100% vs. 14.2%; p < .05) and cholelithiasis (96.2% vs. 74.0%; p < .05). MRCP also demonstrated a slightly higher sensitivity in revealing post cholecystectomy complications (92.8% vs. 78.5%), even though the difference did not reach statistical significance (p = .317). A variety of other findings and anatomical variants of the biliary and pancreatic ducts were revealed only by MRCP.

Conclusions: MRCP showed an overall higher sensitivity for revealing hepatobiliary disorders compared to abdominal US.  The modality is especially useful when the findings revealed by abdominal US are inconclusive or when clinical suspicion persists despite negative US results.