Prevalence of Gallstone Disease in Patients with End-Stage Renal Disease Treated with Hemodialysis

Lee, Hang Lak; Hahm, Joon Soo; Son, Byung Kwan; Lee, Jeong Ik; Joung, Chung Il; Eun, Chang Soo; Lee, Oh Young; Jun, Yong Chul; Han, Dong Soo; Choi, Ho Soon; Yoon, Byung Chul; Kim, Ho Jung; Lee, Min Ho; Kee, Choon Suhk

Abstract

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Gallstone disease is one of the major cause of morbidity in adults. Hemodialysis (HD) has been found to increase risk of gallstone formation following increase in bile cholesterol and biliary saturation index. There are very few data about the prevalence of gallstone in hemodialysis patients and so, we performed this study.
METHODS
We compared the prevalence of gallstone disease in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) treated with HD with that in 208 age- and sex-matched controls (non-uremic control group). Patients who had chronic liver disease, renal disease, and diabetes were excluded from the control group.
RESULTS
In our study, we found a prevalence of gallstone of 18.3% in patients with ESRD treated with HD, which was significantly higher than 5.3% in the non-uremic control group. In most of our HD patients, cholecystolithiasis was asymptomatic. HD patients with cholecystolithiasis were statistically significantly older than patients without gallstones. We did not find a difference in sex, duration of HD treatment between patients with and without gallstones.
CONCLUSIONS
Our results suggest that the prevalence of gallstone disease is higher in patient with ESRD treated with HD than in non-uremic population in Korea.