Radionuclide Scan of the Gallbladder (Nursing)

00:01 So if you're following along with us in this part of the video series, we are talking about the special diagnostic tests in evaluating somebody with suspected acute cholecystitis.

00:11 Everybody's going to get lab work. Right? So we talked about those four categories of blood tests.

00:17 Now if those come back with abnormal values then an ultrasound of the gallbladders, what's most commonly ordered because it's quick, it's easy, and it's less invasive.

00:28 However, we've got some problems if we can't visualize the abdomen very well and get good pictures.

00:33 Remember if the patient has a lot of adipose tissue or if they're full of flatulence.

00:38 So we might step up to an abdominal CAT scan.

00:41 Remember your job is to make sure it's safe.

00:45 The test only takes 10 to 30 minutes, but if the patient has renal problems those could be a very deadly 10 to 30 minutes for their kidneys, but this is the bomb diggity.

00:56 This one is so fun.

00:57 Gallbladder radionucleide scan.

01:01 This is going to get us the finest Christmas pictures that you can imagine.

01:06 Let me tell you why. Okay, now it's got some big names.

01:09 So the official name is a gallbladder radionuclide scan.

01:13 That's for those of us that have a hard time pronouncing Hepatobiliary Iminodiacetic Acid Scan(HIDA) Okay, that's why you'll hear normal mortals like me call it a HIDA scan, because it's very difficult to wrap your lips around those words.

01:28 Let me break it down will slow it down and break those words down.

01:33 Underline hepato, that means liver.

01:37 Biliary, oh, those are the ducts that drain bile from the liver past the gallbladder and the pancreas into the small intestine.

01:45 Now the next word amino diacidic acid, that's what they inject.

01:49 So don't worry about memorizing that, but a HIDA scan is just that, we're looking at the hepatobiliary system.

01:58 We've got these special radioactive tracers that are injected into the patient's vein.

02:04 Now when we inject these tracers, we can view with special imaging equipment some really cool pictures.

02:13 So what are the takeaways before we even finish up this section? Well, a gallbladder radionuclide scan involves injecting radioactive tracers.

02:23 You may hear it referred to as a HIDA scan, you know, because we're looking at the hepatobiliary system that type of acidic acid not are key point right now just recognize a HIDA scan, and a gallbladder radionuclide scan are likely the same thing.

02:39 So we've got these radioactive tracers injected into their veins.

02:43 Now we use this special imaging equipment and we can get amazing pictures.

02:49 You can detect bile duct blockage, cholecystitis, gallstones, bile leakage, or even birth defects in that hepatobiliary system.

02:59 This is so much more intense than what you can see on a CAT scan, but just like a CAT scan being more expensive than an ultrasound.

03:08 This test is even more expensive than a CAT scan.

03:13 So it's not enough to just get these really cool pictures.

03:16 We've got more as they say on those late-night infomercials.

03:20 There's some other data we can get.

03:22 Gallbladder ejection fraction.

03:25 Yeah, that's right ejection fraction like you're used to hearing about in patients with CHF.

03:31 Remember for measuring how hard how difficult it is for the heart to eject blood out to the rest of the body, we use that as a measurement.

03:42 In gallbladder disease were looking at how much ejection fraction, the percentage of total bile that gets produced during a certain time gets a ejected out into that hepatobiliary system.

03:55 So this just tells us how well is the gallbladder able to push that bile out into the hepatobiliary system.

04:02 So it ejection fraction means how much either the heart is able to push blood out through the rest of the body or in the case of looking at your gallbladder.

04:12 What percentage of the total bile is the gallbladder able to eject or push into the hepatobiliary system.