Sonographic Evaluation of Right Upper Quadrant Abdominal Pain

Abstract

A large number of conditions can cause right upper quadrant abdominal pain. The aim of this paper is to report the sonographic abnormalities associated with right upper quadrant abdominal pain in a sample of 155 adult patients from Basrah. During the period from 1st of March to 1st of July 2013, 155 adult patients aged between 20 to 70 years (107 females, 48 males) with right upper quadrant abdominal pain were observed at The Port Hospital and private clinics in Basrah. A detailed medical history was taken and a thorough physical examination was made. All the patients were examined with abdominal ultrasound with aim of detecting any sonographic abnormalities that can help in the diagnosis and treatment of the patients. Eight patients had no sonographic abnormalities, 197 ultra-sonographic abnormalities were detected in 147 patients. Genito-urinary abnormalities were found in 95 patients, hepato-biliary abnormalities were found in 82 patients and gastrointestinal abnormalities were found in 20 patients.In conclusion, genito-urinary sonographic abnormalities found to be the most common sonographic abnormalities associated with upper quadrant abdominal pain as it were found in 95 patients (48%).

Sonographic Evaluation of Causes of Right Hypochondriac Pain

“…Right upper quadrant abdominal pain, arising from the GIT tract or nearby organs, is the utmost recurrent and frequent cause of patients presenting in the hospital emergency and outpatient department, with studies calculating the incidence up to 7.9 percent of all the patient visits (2) . Even though, there are many recorded causes of hypochondriac pain, the most common causes on the right side accounts for diseases related to gall bladder, gastritis, hepatitis, urinary tract infections, pancreatitis and numerous such ailments (3) . Gallstone disease or cholelithiasis is amongst the most common reason of RUQ pain, with a worldwide prevalence of ten percent for the presence of disease in general population; nonetheless, most of the patients are initially asymptomatic (more than two percent) leading to delayed diagnosis and complications such as choledocholithiasis.…”