Diagnosis and Surgical Treatment of Hepatic Hydatid Disease

In this report two hundred and twenty six patients with hydatid disease were admitted to the SurgicalDepartment of Erciyes University (Kayseri) and Şişli Etfal Hospital (Istanbul) between 1978 and 1990and reviewed retrospectively. One hundred and two patients (45.1%) were male and 124 (54.9%)female. In the patients with hydatid cysts the most frequent symptom was right upper abdominal pain(66%). The most frequent signs were hepatomegaly (43.8%) and palpable mass (39%). One hundredand sixty seven patients (73.9%) were examined with ultrasonography which has a diagnostic value of94%. Preoperative complications were infection of cyst (7%), intrabiliary rupture (3.5%) and anaphylacticshock (0.4%). All patients were operated on by using various surgical techniques; omentoplasty(101), external drainage of residual cavity (64), marsupialization (25), capitonnage (15), introflexion(10), pericystectomy (6), and hepatic resection (5).The main postoperative complications were wound infection (12%) and biliary fistula (2.6%). Thetotal mortality rate was 1.8% in this series.