In acute viral hepatitis, ultrasound examination of the liver also reveals pathologic changes of other organs, especially of the gallbladder and, less frequently, of the pancreas and regional lymph hilar nodes. Ninety patients divided into 3 groups of 30 patients each, suffering from viral hepatitis (group 1), acute calculous cholecystitis (group 2) or liver cirrhosis (group 3), were prospectively analyzed. An increased gallbladder wall thickness of 4.67 +/- 0.66 mm was recorded in all group 1 patients. In the group with acute viral hepatitis, gallbladder wall thickening was only present during the first week of the disease, and was almost two-fold thinner than that found in the group with acute calculous cholecystitis, where it ranged from 4.3 to 10.3 mm. The gallbladder wall thickening in cirrhosis patients was found to depend on liver decompensation during the course of cirrhosis.