Evaluate Gallstone Pain Before Surgery
This figure might take you by surprise: almost 800,000 Americans a year have gallbladder removal surgery.
Called a cholecystectomy, the surgery is often called for when a patient has repeated gallbladder attacks which are marked by pain in the upper abdomen or chest from gallstones. Even though the surgery has become more high-tech and less invasive in recent years, it’s not a foolproof method for making your abdominal pain go away.
That is why it’s interesting to learn that a new study in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology suggests doctors make better assessments of a patient’s pain before going ahead with surgery. According to a summary of the journal article in ScienceDaily, as many as 50 percent of patients still report abdominal pain after a cholecystectomy.
“Given the number of cholecystectomies that are performed, this study underscores the importance of taking a detailed history when selecting patients for surgery,” said the lead author of the study, Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Johnson L. Thistle, in ScienceDaily.
By figuring out the frequency and duration of a patient’s gallbladder attacks, as well as the time of day they occur, physicians might get a better handle on who would benefit from gallbladder removal surgery. Also, the patient’s symptoms need to be differentiated from possible gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) or irritable bowel syndrome, Thistle said.
Gallstones, which resemble crystals or pebbles of digestive matter, can be as small as a grain of sand or as large as a golf ball. Gallstones can gather in the gallbladder by the hundreds, or maybe you will be the patient who has just one irksome gallstone.
Interestingly, though, most of the time gallstones do not cause any pain. They just happen to have been detected during some kind of imaging procedure.
“About 80 percent of gallstones never become symptomatic,” Thistle said.
For Thistle’s study, researchers looked at the records of more than 1,000 patients with upper abdominal pain who had elective cholecystectomy for uncomplicated gallstone disease.
We value and respect the experiences of all of our HERWriters, but everyone is different. Many of our writers are speaking from personal experience, and what's worked for them may not work for you. Their articles are not a substitute for medical advice although we hope you can gain knowledge from their insight.
Add a CommentComments
There are no comments yet. Be the first one and get the conversation started!