Gallstones
Doctors were operating on a suspected cancer patient to find a bunch of gallstones, to be more specific, a staggering 838 of them! Gallstones, or cholelithiasis, are crystalline bodies formed within the biliary tree, including the gallbladder and the common bile duct, by the concretion of bile components, cholesterol, or a mixture of both. Usually, multiple small gallstones measuring about 0.5 cm will be present within the gallbladder. However occasionally there can be either one very large gallstone present measuring up to 5 cm diameter or hundreds of smaller stones the size of a grain of sand. The 60 year old patient had excruciating epigastric abdominal pain especially after a fat-rich meal, and intermittent fevers for over a year. A CT scan showed a mass near her gallbladder, and surgeons suspected she had cancer, until they found the true cause of her pain. Cholecystectomy was performed and an extraordinary amount of gallstones were found during the surgery, as seen above, with the ruler giving a sense of scale. They were all emptied into the dish and counted to be as many as 838 gallstones.
we see more cholesterol stones depending on the eating habits. Black pigment stones are more common in some blood disorders. Brown pigment stones are less common and are more common in countries where hygiene is bad due to bacterial contamination.
