Introduction: Liver abscess is the accumulation of pus in the liver parenchyma. It is the most common cause of intraabdominal abscess. It is of two types: pyogenic liver abscess and amoebic liver abscess. Treatment of larger abscesses involves drainage, either by percutaneous aspiration or percutaneous drainage. This study was an attempt to compare the efficacy between the two methods. Methods: The study included 50 patients with liver abscess of size more than 5 cm. Two compared modalities of percutaneous treatment of liver abscess were needle aspiration and pigtail catheter aspiration, performed under ultrasonographic guidance. Results were compared on the basis of clinical improvement, duration of hospital stay and time for reduction of abscess. Results: Amoebic liver abscess (72%) was more common than pyogenic liver abscess (28%). Clinical recovery was faster in catheter group (average 2.56 days) than in aspiration group (average 5.2 days) (p-value <0.05). The mean reduction in total counts in the catheter group was 8193 while that in the aspiration group was 6208. The mean duration for the abscess size to reduce to 50% was 4.3 days in the aspiration group while that was 2.76 in the catheter group (p = 0.018). Patients who underwent aspiration needed repeated interventions as compared to the other group. The mean duration of hospital stay was 10.32 among the aspiration group while that was 5.72 among the catheter group (p < 0.05). Conclusions: Our study concluded that catheter drainage of liver abscess had earlier improvement of symptoms, better control of infection, faster duration of resolution of the abscess and shorter hospital stay as compared to percutaneous aspiration.

Keywords: Liver abscess; Pigtail catheter; Aspiration; Faster recovery.