Doctors in Taichung recently extracted nearly 5,000 gallstones from a man who had been experiencing abdominal pain for several months, said the city’s Tzu Chi Hospital.
In a press release issued Tuesday, one of the hospital’s surgeons, Dr. Yu Cheng-Chan (???), said that the case was a medical anomaly, as most people would typically amass around 10 or 20 stones in their gallbladders at most.
According to the 43-year-old patient, who remained anonymous, he began feeling abdominal discomfort over the past few months.
Initially assuming that it was a result of sleeping with bad posture, he then tried correcting his symptoms through medication and better pillows.
Seeing no improvement, followed by additional symptoms such as chronic diarrhea, he then sought further consultation from experts who discovered that the issue was coming from his gallbladder.
The man went on to confess that fried food and meat were staples in his daily life.
He said that his habit of eating fried food started in childhood, and continued throughout college and adulthood.
Yu said the patient’s dietary preferences and his obesity were common reasons for how gallstones could build up.
Yu explained that the main function of the gallbladder is to store and concentrate bile produced by the liver, before releasing it into the small intestine to help digest food.
As such, the presence of gallstones could irritate the gallbladder to cause discomfort or pain, with the possibility of more severe infections should a stone fall into a bile duct.
While most people believe upper abdominal discomfort indicates a problem in the stomach, it could actually be due to problems in other organs such as the gallbladder or pancreas, added Yu.
Aside from stomach pain, Yu said, irritation from gallstones is the one of the most common upper abdominal problems, which would traditionally require surgical removal of the organ, which happened with the patient as he had to have his gallbladder removed through laparoscopy.
According to Yu, most people who have had their gallbladder removed could live normally without the organ, with only a few cases having suffered the side effect of diarrhea after consuming greasy food.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel