Copyright: ©Author(s) 2026. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. No commercial re-use. See permissions. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc.
World J Clin Pediatr. Jun 9, 2026; 15(2): 114534
Published online Jun 9, 2026. doi: 10.5409/wjcp.v15.i2.114534
Published online Jun 9, 2026. doi: 10.5409/wjcp.v15.i2.114534
Pediatric acute cholecystitis: Risk factors and outcomes
Sathyaprasad C Burjonrappa, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, United States
Faith Blamon, Sean P Hurley, Department of Surgery, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, United States
Author contributions: Burjonrappa SC contributed to concept development, supervision, manuscript revision, and editing; Blamon F contributed to data collection, statistical analysis, and manuscript drafting; Hurley SP contributed to statistical revision, presentation at international meeting.
AI contribution statement: During manuscript preparation, ChatGPT and Grammarly were used for language editing and data analysis. No AI-generated content appears in the main text (abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, conclusion), which was fully written by the authors. AI tools were not used for study design or result interpretation. No AI-generated images are included in this manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: A publicly available Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act-compliant database was used, which precludes the need for Institutional Review Board approval.
Informed consent statement: This is to declare that the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program data that have been used for this study are publicly available, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act-compliant data, and Institutional Review Board requirements are waived. No signed consent form was necessary from the patients whose data are included in this project.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: Data sharing is not available.
Corresponding author: Sathyaprasad C Burjonrappa, MD, Chief, FACS, FRCS (Ed), Full Professor, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, 1 RWJ Place, Suite 504, MEB, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, United States. sb2058@rwjms.rutgers.edu
Received: September 22, 2025
Revised: October 21, 2025
Accepted: January 22, 2026
Published online: June 9, 2026
Processing time: 233 Days and 6.7 Hours
Revised: October 21, 2025
Accepted: January 22, 2026
Published online: June 9, 2026
Processing time: 233 Days and 6.7 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: The increase in incidence of cholecystitis in the pediatric age group parallels the global increase in childhood obesity. While the Tokyo Guidelines 2018 are widely adopted in adult surgical practice, their criteria are based on physiologic and anatomic assumptions that may not directly apply to children. This manuscript aims to contextualize pediatric acute cholecystitis as a distinct clinical entity with unique etiologies, risk factors, and outcomes. It evaluates the predictive value of obesity and hemolytic diseases and describes trends in biliary interventions such as endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography.