What are the signs and symptoms of gallstone disease?
Symptoms of gallbladder disease occur when gallstones irritate the gallbladder. The most common symptoms associated with gallstone disease include: • Severe and intermittent pain in the right upper abdomen. This pain can also spread to the chest, shoulders or back. Sometimes this pain may be mistaken for a heart attack. • Chronic indigestion and nausea. In addition to these symptoms, gallstones can also cause more serious complications. These occur when stones are expelled from the gallbladder during contraction and become lodged within bile ducts. This can lead to infection and obstruction of these ducts. When this occurs it is called acute cholecystitis (if the infection is within the gallbladder) or cho-langitis (if the infection is within the bile ducts). Occasionally gallstones may block the bile duct at the entrance to the pancreas and intestine causing pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas). Gallstones are the most common cause of acute pancreatitis. If gallstones block the
