THE CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF JAUNDICE

Abstract

The clinical significance of jaundice has been the same for the past twenty years or more. Jaundice should have no different meaning in the eyes of the surgeon than it has for the physician. The first question occurring to any one contemplating the jaundiced patient regardless of all else should be, Is there stoppage of the bile ducts? When this query cannot be answered in the affirmative, jaundice becomes a medical problem and the physician proceeds to make hard work of its solution. As long as the physician continues to classify his nonsurgical jaundiced patient by old fashioned and established methods, his job is not so difficult. He makes it easy by the use of convenient names such as catarrhal jaundice, infectious jaundice or icterus gravis as determined by certain more or less related symptoms. Whenever the physician undertakes a rational study of the patient and attempts to speak of