A clinical and anatomical study of anomalous terminations of the common bile duct into the duodenum.

Termination of the common bile duct into the duodenum was studied in 1000 patients by operative cholangiograms obtained from 5 different San Francisco Bay Area hospitals. The results indicate the strong probability that the duodenal biliary papilla is anomalously placed in at least 13% of the 1000 patients studied. Comments relative to the importance of this fact to surgeons and radiologists are made, and suggestion of a possible causative factor for the anomalies is proposed.