A 30-year-old woman from Pune suffered severe abdominal pain during her pregnancy and tests indicated she had developed gallstones that interfered with the normal functioning of her organs. While a surgery was postponed due to her pregnancy, she eventually underwent a 20 minute procedure involving three punctures to remove as many as 1,000 tiny stones, measuring 1-2 mm, from the gallbladder.
“This is an unusual case mainly as the patient was young and healthy,” laparoscopic and bariatric surgeon Dr Shashank Shah told The Indian Express.
“She had small 1 to 2 mm greenish yellow stones; most likely cholesterol stones,” Dr Shah said. Genes that influence the production of cholesterol have a role to play in gallstone risk and in her case there could have been a genetic tendency of condensation of cholesterol in the bile.
Gallstones are hardened deposits of digestive juice called bile that form in the cavity of the gallbladder. The causes of gallstones can be attributed to a high fat diet, heredity, obesity and a sedentary lifestyle.
“The woman suffered from excruciating abdominal pain due to the presence of gallstones that interfered with her daily routine. She would cry out loudly in pain and struggled a lot as there was a significant obstruction in the outlet of her gallbladder due to the significant accumulation of stones. We had to perform a 20 minute laparoscopic cholecystectomy (laparoscopic removal of gallbladder) with only three punctures,” Dr Shah told The Indian Express.
