What happens to biliary colic patients in New York State? 10-year follow-up from emergency department visits

Biliary colic is a common diagnosis for patients presenting to the emergency department (ED). The purpose of this study is to examine the outcomes of patients coming to the ED with biliary colic.

The NYS longitudinal SPARCS database was used to identify patients presenting to the ED with biliary colic from 2005 to 2014. Through the use of a unique identifier, patients were followed in NYS across multiple institutions. Patients who were lost to follow-up, with duplicated records, and those that underwent percutaneous cholecystectomy tubes were excluded from the analysis.

Between 2005 and 2014, there were 72,376 patients who presented to an ED with biliary colic. The admission rate was 20.7–26.02%. Overall, most patients who presented to the ED did not undergo surgery (39,567, 54.7%), of which 35,204 (89%) had only one ED visit, while 4,363(11%) returned to the ED (≥ 2 visits). Only 3.23–5.51% of patients underwent cholecystectomy at the time of initial presentation. Most subsequent cholecystectomies were performed electively (27.38–52.51%) (See Table 1 in this article). Average time to surgery among patients with elective cholecystectomy was 178.4 days. From the patients who underwent cholecystectomy, 10.35% had cholecystectomy at their first ED visit, 77.7% had cholecystectomy following the first ED visit, and 12% had multiple ED visits prior to surgery. Among patients who were discharged from the ED, 32% had their surgery at a different hospital than index presentation.

A significant portion of patients (48.6%) who present to the ED with biliary colic will not return or have surgery within 5 years. A third of patients who eventually undergo cholecystectomy will go to another hospital for their surgery.