Etiological Classification of Bile Duct Dilatation and Proportion of Each Cause in 1430 Patients

Yunfu Lv, Xiaoyu Han1, Xiaoguang Gong, Haiying Wu, Ning Liu, Yanfen Hu, Jie Deng, Yejuan Li, Qingqing Li

Objective: To investigate the etiology of bile duct dilatation and proportion of each cause. Methods: A retrospective study was performed by classification on clinical data collected from 1430 patients with bile duct dilatation in our hospital from January 2000 to December 2013.  Results: There were 90 patients with congenital bile duct cysts (6.3%) and 1340 with secondary bile duct dilatation (93.7%). In total, 22 categories of causes were identified. Among them, the top five were bile duct stones (n=476, 33.3%), pancreatic head carcinoma (n=179, 12.5%), periampullary carcinoma (n=159, 11.9%), cholangiocarcinoma (n=89, 6.2%), and chronic pancreatitis or pancreatic head cyst (n=80, 5.6%). Conclusion: The causes of bile duct dilatation can be classified into congenital and secondary categories. The former accounted for approximately 6.0% and the latter for approximately 94%. The most common causes were bile duct stones, pancreatic head carcinoma and periampullary carcinoma.