Evaluation of the Radioactive Rose-Bengal Test for the Differential Diagnosis of Obstructive Jaundice in Infants

Abstract

THE clinical differentiation of atresia of the extrahepatic bile ducts from the intrahepatic conditions causing obstructive jaundice has been a challenge to pediatricians from the time when these two conditions were first described in the medical literature. Surgical correction within the first four weeks of life is mandatory in isolated atresia of the extrahepatic bile ducts if irreversible changes in the parenchyma are to be avoided.1 The importance of early operation has been emphasized by a number of investigators.2 3 4 "Neonatal hepatitis" and other intrahepatic conditions, causing an "obstructive" jaundice clinically indistinguishable from that due to extrahepatic atresia, are not amenable . . .