Utilidad de la biopsia hepática en el estudio del paciente pediátrico. Revisión de 145 casos.

There were reviewed 145 cases of children in which hepatic biopsy was done at the Hospital Infantil del Estado de Sonora, from 1978 to 1990. The larger age group were infants and preschool children (74.3 percent) males being predominant; signs and symptoms were related with hepatic illness, as well as the admission diagnoses. The indication of biopsy was for confirmation of liver disease in more than 50 percent, 37.1 percent for unknown diagnoses and 20.6 percent to look for liver disease by a systemic illness. The most usual procedure was percutaneous biopsy with Vim-Silverman needle in 111 cases (76.5 percent), in 23 percent, the biopsy was done by major surgical method. Nine percent of the children needed open surgical method after percutaneous biopsy. The time from the admission to biopsy performance in patients with neonatal hepatitis vs biliary atresia was 14 days. In other type of illness the time was 25 days. The morbidity was 1 percent. There was no mortality. The histopathologic diagnosis of liver diseases was done in 96 cases (66.7 percent) by this method in 31 children (21.3 percent) with investigation of jaundice (neonatal hepatitis vs biliary atresia). The diagnostic mistake in tissues obtained by percutaneous needle, was statistically significant (p < 0.05). Average hospitalization stay was less than two months in 70 percent of the cases.