To study the features of adenomyomatous hyperplasia (AH) of the Vaterian system (common bile duct and ampulla of Vater) to help in the diagnosis and management of this disease.

A retrospective analysis on the data of 17 patients who had a postoperative pathological diagnosis of AH of the Vaterian system treated from January 2005 to December 2021 at the First Medical Center of the PLA General Hospital was carried out with 12 males and 5 females, aged (58.4±11.3) years. The clinical presentations, treatment and postoperative pathology of these patients were analyzed. Patients with dysplasia of the tubular mucosal epithelium in the non-cancerous area around the AH under microscopy were included in the AH with dysplasia group (n=8), and those without dysplasia were included in the control group (n=9). The clinical characteristics of the two groups were compared.

The main clinical symptoms were abdominal pain in 8 patients, jaundice in 7 patients and fever in 2 patients. Preoperative imaging showed 10 cases of occupying lesions and 6 cases of abnormally dilated intrahepatic and extrahepatic bile ducts without obvious lesions or stones or biliary tract injury stenosis. Sixteen patients underwent radical pancreaticoduodenectomy, and 1 patient underwent extrahepatic biliary resection combined with choledochojejunostomy for bile duct obstruction due to biliary stones, 3 patients had combined malignant tumors, 1 patient had a carcinoma of AH origin at the ampulla of Vater, and the other 2 patients had neoplastic lesions in the mucosal epithelium adjacent to the AH (cholangiocarcinoma and ampullary carcinoma, respectively). There were no significant differences in age, gender, bile duct stones, cholangitis, combined carcinoma and liver function indexes between the two groups of patients with AH of the Vaterian system (all P>0.05).

Adenomyomatous hyperplasia of the Vaterian system was difficult to distinguish preoperatively from malignant tumors basing on its clinical presentations or imaging findings. Such patients are recommended to be treated surgically.

Common bile duct; Bile duct neoplasms; Adenomyomatous hyperplasia; Ampulla of Vater; Mucosal epithelial dysplasia