Autoimmune cholangitis mimicking a klatskin tumor: a case report
Bibliographic record
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Autoimmune cholangitis remains an elusive manifestation of immunoglobulin G4-associated systemic disease most commonly encountered in patients with autoimmune pancreatitis. No strict diagnostic criteria have been described to date and diagnosis mainly relies on a combination of clinical and histopathologic findings. It is hence even more challenging to diagnose autoimmune cholangitis in patients with late or atypical presentations, such as without concomitant pancreatic involvement. Early diagnosis of this rare disorder can significantly improve outcomes considering high rates of surgical intervention, as well as high relapse rates in the absence of steroid treatment. To the best of our knowledge the literature is quite sparse on cases with atypical presentations of autoimmune cholangitis. CASE PRESENTATION: We report a case of a previously healthy 65-year-old man of Middle-Eastern origin, with a history of pancreatic insufficiency of unknown etiology, evaluated for elevated liver function tests found incidentally on a routine physical examination. Imaging studies revealed an atrophic pancreas and biliary duct dilatation consistent with obstruction. Subsequent endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography showed a bile duct narrowing pattern suggestive of cholangiocarcinoma, but brushings failed to reveal malignant cells. Our patient proceeded to undergo surgical resection. Histological examination of the resected mass revealed lymphoplasmacytic infiltrate with no malignant features. Our patient returned three months later with persistently high liver function tests and no evidence of biliary obstruction on imaging. A presumptive diagnosis of autoimmune cholangitis was made and our patient's symptoms resolved after a short course of an oral steroid regimen. Post factum staining of the resection specimen revealed an immunoglobulin G4 antibody positive immune cell infiltrate, consistent with the proposed diagnosis. CONCLUSION: Our case thus highlights the importance of clinician awareness of the autoimmune spectrum of biliary pathologies when confronted with atypical clinical presentations, the paucity of diagnostic measures and the benefit from long-term steroid and/or immunosuppressive treatment.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.008 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".