From a cross sectional study of gall stone disease ascertained by ultrasonography, the prevalence in relation to age at menarche, use of oral contraceptives, childbirths, breastfeeding, abortions, age at menopause, and menopausal hormone therapy was assessed. The random sample comprised 2301 women of Danish origin aged 30, 40, 50, and 60 years, of whom 1765 (77%) attended the investigation. Gal...

The relationship between cholesterol in plasma and risk of gall stone formation was investigated in 210 obese patients who underwent jejunoileal bypass surgery and were free of gall stone disease at that time. Among 185, successfully reexamined on average 19 months after surgery, 26 (14%) developed gall stones. The fall in plasma cholesterol after surgery exhibited a U-shaped relation to risk o...

Laparoscopic cholecystectomy can be performed using instruments even smaller than 3 mm in diameter and with two, three or four ports, depending on the choice of the operating surgeon. In any of these techniques of laparoscopic cholecystectomy, the gall bladder is usually removed through the umbilical port. This requires repositioning of the instruments and reorientation. Using the standard four...

It has been proposed that duodenogastric reflux may be the basic underlying mechanism which gives rise to symptoms of flatulent dyspepsia. Fasting and postprandial gastric juice bile acid concentrations were measured in patients with flatulent dyspepsia with and without gall bladder disease and postcholecystectomy. There were 13 patients with gall bladder disease, 12 with normal gall bladders a...

Gall bladder mucocele (GBM) may currently represent the most common indication for surgical management of extra-hepatic biliary tract disease in dogs. It has not yet been convincingly described in cats. The underlying lesion has been described as cystic mucosal hyperplasia. Hypersecretion of mucus progressively leads to an accumulation of gelatinous bile within the gall bladder lumen. Increased...

We studied gall bladder contractility in 61 children with beta-thalassaemia who were asymptomatic for gall bladder disease and 51 sex- and age-matched controls in Cairo, Egypt, using, andreal-time ultrasonography. Multiple gall bladder stones were present in 18.0% of thalassaemia patients and sludge in 6.6%. There were statistically significant differences between thalassaemia patients controls...

The main pancreatic duct and the common bile duct open into the second part of the duodenum alone or after joining as a common channel. A common channel of greater than 15 mm (an anomalous pancreaticobiliary duct) is associated with congenital cystic dilatation of the common bile duct and carcinoma of the gall bladder. Even a long common channel (greater than or equal to 8 mm) is associated wit...

Nitric oxide (NO) serves as a neurotransmitter in the nonadrenergic and non-cholinergic (NANC) inhibitory pathway of the gastrointestinal tract. Several findings have demonstrated the presence of NO-synthase containing nerve fibers and neurons in the wall of the gall bladder and biliary pathways of several mammals including man and NO serves as a modulator in the control of the contractions of ...

Eleven years have passed since Rous and McMaster (15) published their paper on the concentrating activity of the gall bladder. This contribution and subsequent ones by them and their associates renewed the interest of investigators in this organ. Two schools have developed, each with a different fundamental concept of gall bladder function. The one, following what would appear to be the more lo...