Differential diagnosis between benign and malignant biliary tract obstruction: discriminative usefulness of some clinical and laboratory data.

The data of 26 patients with obstructive jaundice caused by biliary tract stones were compared to those of patients with malignant obstructive jaundice in order to evaluate the diagnostic effectiveness of some laboratory tests in the differential diagnosis between these two conditions. The Fisher's discriminant analysis was employed. The combined evaluation of serum albumin and haptoglobin appeared to have the most satisfactory discriminative effectiveness, yielding a 54% rate of correct diagnosis, with a safety margin of 95%.