Fever! Post bile duct surgery! Post-pancreaticoduodenal surgery! Who’s at fault?

  Many patients who have undergone bile duct surgery, pancreaticoduodenal surgery, or after stent placement in the bile duct or sphincter of Oddis dissection have recurrent fever symptoms despite effective remission of the original disease. After improving with anti-infection treatment in the hospital, the fever, sometimes accompanied by chills and chills, appeared again within a few days for unknown reasons. What exactly is the cause of this situation? In fact, this is a complication of biliary surgery – reflux cholangitis. Under normal circumstances, the opening of the bile duct in the intestinal tract has the role of oddis sphincter, which can effectively prevent the contents of the intestinal cavity from reflux into the bile duct. However, some biliary surgeries have damaged the function of the oddis sphincter to varying degrees, making duodenal fluid, gastric fluid, food residue, and even some bacteria flow back into the bile duct, leading to bile duct inflammation and even liver abscess in severe cases. As a result, patients develop a fever often after eating.  How to detect it? The presence of pneumoperitoneum in the bile ducts and hepatic ducts or the presence of barium in the bile ducts or hepatic ducts after barium meal can be seen by abdominal CT, which is a favorable indication of the disease.  To determine the occurrence of the disease, conservative medical treatment: in addition to active anti-infection in case of fever, the patient should be advised to eat less and more meals, reduce greasy and gas-producing diet, add gastrointestinal motility drugs such as morpholine to promote gastrointestinal emptying, add bile tablets and ursodeoxycholic acid to promote bile excretion, and lie in a high pillow position. If the effect is not satisfactory after medical treatment, consider surgical interventions, including: if the original bile duct duodenal anastomosis is changed to bile duct jejunostomy; bile duct remodeling with the addition of tipped vascular collaterals; enlargement of the bile intestinal anastomosis; extended intestinal collaterals for bile duct jejunostomy, etc.