Although a number of cases of congenital absence of the bile ducts have been reported, the condition is sufficiently rare to warrant an additional clinical and pathologic report, especially because the subject survived one year and twelve days.
Lavenson,1 in 1908, in a review of sixty-two cases of congenital obliteration of the bile ducts, reported that only three patients had lived more than eight months; two had lived nine months, and one, eleven months. Ladd,2 in 1928, reported twenty cases of congenital atresia with stenosis of the bile ducts, in eleven of which the patients were subjected to operation, but the condition was amenable to surgical treatment in only eight. Six of these patients recovered; in other words, 40 per cent of Ladd's twenty cases were operable. Warren Cole,3 in 1931, reported four cases of complete absence of all extrahepatic ducts. One of these patients was operated