Haemobilia Following Percutaneous Liver Biopsy

Sophie Georgin-Lavialle^1*, William Curtis¹, Anne Hernigou², Brigitte Ranque², Jacques Pouchot¹and Amélie Passeron¹

¹Internal Medicine Service, Paris

²Department of Radiology, Paris Descartes University, Paris

*Corresponding Author:

Sophie Georgin-Lavialle
Internal Medicine Service
Georges Pompidou European Hospital
20 rue Leblanc, 75015 Paris
Tel : 01 56 01 72 04
Fax: 01 56 01 71 46
E-mail: sophie.georgin-lavialle@tnn.aphp.fr

Received date: November 25, 2014; Accepted date: November 26, 2014; Published date: December 02, 2014

Citation: Georgin-Lavialle S, Curtis W, Hernigou A, Ranque B, Pouchot J, et al. (2014) Haemobilia Following Percutaneous Liver Biopsy. J Gastroint Dig Syst 4:i101. doi:10.4172/2161-069X.1000i101

Copyright: © 2014 Georgin-Lavialle S, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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A 32 years old man, previously followed for chronic alcoholic pancreatitis underwent a percutaneous liver biopsy for a suspect liver image. At that time, gallbladder had a normal aspect on MRI (hyposignal, panel 1A) and on CT (hypodensitiy, panel 2A). Histological examination of the tumour biopsy revealed a hepatocellular carcinoma in an otherwise healthy liver. Ten days after biopsy, he suddenly felt intense right-sided hypochondriac pain with liver enzyme elevation (15N), suggesting biliary colic. New imaging detected haemobilia (hypersignal on RMI, panel 1B and hyperdensity on CT, panel 2B). Pain and cytolysis were spontaneously regressive under antalgic treatment. A digestive echoendoscopy performed 5 days later revealed no gallstone.

Hemobilia denotes bleeding to the biliary tree, resulting from the pathological connection between a vessel and the biliary system. Most common causes are iatrogenic injuries such as in our patient. Haemobilia is rare but is a challenging radiologic diagnosis.