Prevalence of gallstone disease in patients with end-stage renal disease treated with hemodialysis in Korea

Background/Aims: Gallstone disease is one of the major causes of morbidity in adults. Hemodialysis has been found to increase the risk of gallstone formation secondary to increased biliary cholesterol and biliary saturation index. However, there is very little data on the prevalence of gallstones in hemodialysis patients. Methodology: We compared the prevalence of gallstone disease in patients with end-stage renal disease treated with hemodialysis with that of 208 age- and sex-matched controls (non-uremic group). Patients who had chronic liver disease, renal disease, and diabetes were excluded from the control group. Results: In our study, we found a prevalence for gallstone of 18.2% in patients with end-stage renal disease treated with hemodialysis, which was significantly higher than 5.3% in the non-uremic control. Most of our hemodialysis patients had asymptomatic cholecystolithiasis. Hemodialysis patients with cholecystolithiasis were significantly older than patients without gallstones. We did not find a difference in sex and duration of hemodialysis treatment between patients with and without gallstones. Conclusions: Our results suggest that the prevalence of gallstone disease is higher in patients with end-stage renal disease treated with hemodialysis than in the non-uremic population in Korea.