Introduction:

Choledocholithiasis (CDL) may be difficult to diagnose. The relevance of making a timely diagnosis lies in its potential negative effects and the fact that treatment requires performing endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP), which is a procedure with a high risk of complications. Several guidelines have been proposed for its diagnosis, including the ASGE Guidelines, which are the most widely used although they do not have an ideal performance, and the guidelines recently published by the BSG. The objective of this study was to compare the performance of both guidelines.

Materials and methods:

Prospective study carried out between August 1, 2017, and July 31, 2018.

Results:

300 patients were included for analysis. 145 underwent ERCP and choledocholithiasis was confirmed in 124 of them (85.5%). Median AST and ALT levels were higher in patients with choledocholithiasis (207 mg/dL and 290 mg/dL). The rate of post-ERCP complications was 5.5%. Multivariate analysis found no significant association for any predictor of CDL. Regarding the “high probability” score, the BSG guidelines had sensitivity of 65% and specificity of 33%, while the ASGE guidelines had sensitivity of 74% and specificity of 28%. Both guidelines were less efficient for “intermediate probability”.

Conclusions:

The ASGE and BSG criteria do not perform well in the population studied to determine whether they had CDL. The ASGE guidelines had a better overall performance than the BSG guidelines.

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