Gallstones – symptoms, causes and treatment

Gallstones can be found in the gallbladder itself, but also in the bile ducts. Gallstones that accumulate in the bile ducts can cause life-threatening consequences that cause inflammation and infections in the bile ducts, liver, or pancreas. At first, you may not even know that your gallstone exists because it does not immediately cause some symptoms as soon as it appears in your body.

But you will feel its existence only when it grows or when it clogs the bile duct, and its symptoms begin and become stronger over time. Symptoms of having gallstones usually begin after a large and fatty meal and occur at night. Although the symptoms of gallstones vary from person to person, there are some that are general symptoms.

If there is a large gallstone in your body, you may experience severe pain in the upper abdomen that intensifies and lasts for up to a few hours, shoulder pain, and pain between the shoulder blades, with nausea and vomiting, fever, fever and cold sweats, constipation, jaundice, bloating, strange stool color and intolerance to fatty foods. If you have any of these symptoms, or worse, you need to see a doctor immediately.

 

Gallstones causes

Gallstones occurs when there is too much cholesterol in the bile, too much bilirubin, too little bile or if the gallbladder is not emptied for some other reason. Calculus can also occur in people who have cirrhosis, inflammation of the bile ducts and in people who have sickle cell anemia. Gallstones most often occur due to overweight, increased estrogen levels, for example in pregnancy, due to birth control pills or hormone therapy, due to age over sixty years, drugs that lower blood cholesterol, sudden weight loss, fasting and diabetes.

Gallstones are more common in women than in men. And any or overweight, that is, obesity or sudden weight loss or sudden weight loss affect the increased level of cholesterol in the gallbladder and thus the formation of gallstones. Why are women more susceptible to this? Namely, the increased level of the sex hormone estrogen causes an increased level of cholesterol in the bile and at the same time the work of the gallbladder decreases, which leads to the formation of gallstones.

Gallstone treatment

The type of treatment that will be applied to remove it gallstones depends on the age of the person who has it, on his health, the history of the disease that the person has, may depend on tolerance to certain drugs, or therapies and procedures, expectations about the condition in which the person is. If you have gallstones that do not cause any symptoms, then treatment will not be necessary because their existence does not cause any discomfort.

However, if you start to experience pain and after that the diagnosis confirms that it is a gallstone, then mandatory treatment is determined. Surgery to remove the gallbladder may occur, in which case bile from the liver in which it is produced will flow through the small intestine. The gallbladder is an organ that can be surgically removed and the human body can function smoothly without it.

In addition to surgery, drug therapy can be used as a method of treatment, which will create bile acid, and the acid will break down the calculus. It can also be treated by injection into the gallbladder, wave therapy that has the power to break down gallstones into small pieces, or disintegration therapy by injecting the drug into the gallbladder itself to break down gallstones.