Biliary Tract Disease
Biliary Tract Surgeon in Nagpur Maharashtra
Dr. Manish Upwanshi is the Best Biliary Tract Surgeon in Nagpur Maharashtra. Biliary atresia is a condition in infants in which the bile ducts outside and inside the liver are scarred and blocked. Bile can’t flow into the intestine, so bile builds up in the liver and damages it. The damage leads to scarring, loss of liver tissue and function, and cirrhosis.
Symptoms & Causes
Newborns with this condition may appear normal at birth. However, jaundice develops by the second or third week of life. Typically, the first sign of biliary atresia is the yellowing of the skin and whites of the eyes, called jaundice, which results from the buildup of bile in the body. Infants with biliary atresia typically develop jaundice by 3 to 6 weeks of age. Experts don’t know what causes biliary atresia.
Other symptoms may include:
Dark urine
Enlarged spleen
Floating stools
Foul-smelling stools
Pale or clay-colored stools
Slow or no weight gain
Slow growth
Diagnosis
To diagnose biliary atresia, doctors will ask about the infant’s medical and family history, perform a physical exam, and order a series of tests. If test results suggest that an infant is likely to have biliary atresia, the next step is surgery to confirm the diagnosis.
Physical exam is performed to feel for an enlarged liver. Other tests include:
Abdominal x-ray
Abdominal ultrasound
Blood tests to check total and direct bilirubin levels
Hepatobiliary iminodiacetic acid (HIDA) scan, also called cholescintigraphy, to help determine if the bile ducts and gallbladder are working properly
Liver biopsy to determine severity of cirrhosis or to rule out other causes of jaundice
X-ray of the bile ducts (cholangiogram)
Treatment
Doctors treat biliary atresia with a surgery called the Kasai procedure and eventually, in most cases, a liver transplant. Thanks to advances in treatment, more than 80 to 90 percent of infants with biliary atresia survive to adulthood.