DRLUGO BLOG

Gallbladder disease can be tricky and go unnoticed for a log time before the pt ends up in the ER with severe abdominal pain.  Now a days with the internet and all of the over the counter remedies the patients tend to wait sometimes too long to get help.  

I have found that many patients tend to wai until it is obvious, that they are having a gallbladder attack or a complication of gallstones to seek help.  Gallbladder disease can present itself as a sudden upper abdominal pain with other gastrointestinal symptoms of nausea and vomiting or simply pain.  The classic symptoms are R upper abdominal pain that sometimes moves along the R rib cage and into the back.  On occasions the pain is sever and moves into the L chest making the pt think he/she is having a heart attack.  This is the classic presentation.  As the reader can imagine, this is not always the way it presents and there is a broad range of ways that the disease can present.  Most of the time is a repeated bouts of what people call indigestion.  This is usually noticed after eating rich or fatty food.  

Because we have so many over the counter anti acid medications, people tend to self prescribe and treat their symptoms.  The problem with this is that the gallbladder disease progresses and can even be deadly.  IF the pt ignores the symptoms and the gallstones move out of the gallbladder, then the pt is up for a tough time.  The complications of this can be, gallbladder infection(cholecystitis), pancreatic inflammation(pancreatitis), and or jaundice.  These are serious problems and can be prevented by removing the gallbladder early on.

As of today the only know solution for gallstones is removal of the gallbladder.  This is done laparoscopically most of the time and the pt is home the same day.  This changes if we wait until one of the above complications sets in.  IF you have any questions, please contact me or come to my office and we can discuss further.  For more information go to my website, www.drlugo.com