Safety of outpatient ultrasound guided percutaneous liver biopsy as a day care procedure

Park, Soo Young; Kim, Eun Soo; Kweon, Kee Tae; Lee, Dong Seok; Cho, Chang Min; Tak, Won Young; Kweon, Young Oh; Kim, Sung Kook; Choi, Yong Hwan

Abstract

BACKGROUND: As an essential procedure in diagnosing and determining the prognosis and treatment modalities of various liver diseases, percutaneous liver biopsies are performed more frequently than ever. The ease and safety of percutaneous liver biopsy has been well established in a number of foreign studies, but complication rates have ranged from 0.9 to 3.7%. As there has been no report regarding the complications of ultrasound-guided percutaneous liver biopsy in Korea, we studied the complication rates to prove the procedure as a day care procedure.
METHODS
We reviewed retrospectively 375 patients, who visited Kyungpook National University Hospital and underwent liver biopsy from January 2000 until August 2002. Liver biopsies were performed percutaneously using 16-gauged spring loaded automated biopsy needle after determining the puncture site with ultrasound. After procedure, vital signs were monitored every 15 minutes for 6 hours.
RESULTS
Among total 375 patients, 311 patients (mean age 29.7) underwent liver biopsy on an outpatient basis and 64 patients (mean age 37.9), on admission. 286 cases (76.3%) were diagnosed as chronic hepatitis B, 43 cases (11.5%) chronic hepatitis C, 20 cases (5.3%) fatty liver, and 26 cases (6.9%) miscellaneous disease. Total 8 complications occurred, 5 (1.6%) of which were in outpatient group, and 3 (4.7%) were in inpatient group. All the complications were pains requiring analgesics and resolved within 4 hours. There was no complication of hemorrhage or perforation requiring transfusion or surgery.
CONCLUSION
By selecting patients carefully and using prebiopsy ultrasound, this procedure can be performed safely as an outpatient procedure. It can meet with the favor of patients who want to return home in a day and reduce the medical costs.