Predicting infected bile among patients undergoing percutaneous cholecystostomy.

Purpose: Patients may not achieve a clinical benefit after percutaneous cholecystostomy due to the inherent difficulty in identifying patients who truly have infected gallbladders. We attempted to identify imaging and biochemical parameters which would help to predict which patients have infected gallbladders.

Methods: A retrospective review was performed of 52 patients undergoing percutaneous cholecystostomy for clinical suspicion of acute cholecystitis in whom bile culture results were available.