Background: Obstructive jaundice, a common clinical problem which has been documented as one of the leading causes of increased mortality and morbidity. Proper clinical data like history, physical examination, and laboratory tests can differentiate between extrahepatic & intrahepatic obstruction in 90% of patients, imaging modalities are essential in diagnosing the cause and site of obstruction.

The diagnostic accuracy of MRCP gives it strong potential to replace the more invasive procedures like diagnostic ERCP, which should be used only in cases where intervention is being contemplated.

Method: In this present study we have prospectively examined 38 patients with obstructive jaundice using Ultrasound and MRCP.

Results: Of the thirty eight patients, one hundred and one patients had benign causes of obstructive jaundice while fifty two patients had malignant causes of obstructive jaundice. MRCP had an accuracy of 95.45% in detecting the cause of obstructive jaundice while USG had a accuracy of 81.63%. The performance of MRCP when compared to USG was statistically more significant (p<0.05).

Conclusion: Assessment of obstructive jaundice and its cause, site and area of involvement of the lesion, MRCP proves to be better imaging modality over other modalities like ultrasound. It also has added advantage of being non invasive procedure with no ionization radiation.

Keywords: Ultrasound, MRCP, Obstructive jaundice.

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Dr Snehil Kumar

Department of Radiodiagnosis, Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences, Karad, Maharashtra, India