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One out of 10 people in the United States have gallstones, the most common disease of the gallbladder. Yet, to state that 10% of the population suffers from gallstones would be wildly inaccurate. Not that the math is incorrect, but rather that “suffer” is too strong a word because the vast majority of people with gallstones will never experience an ill effect of the disease, or ever know they even had them.
The gallbladder is a small organ (only three square inches in area) located on the right side of the abdomen, just beneath the liver. The gallbladder aids in digestion by storing and releasing bile, a digestive juice created by the liver, into the intestine. Bile is predominantly composed of water, but it also contains bile salts, fats, proteins, as well as cholesterol and the pigment bilirubin. Gallstones are created in the gallbladder when the bile contains too much cholesterol, too much bilirubin, or too little bile salts. When any of these conditions exist, hard crystals form in the bile and become gallstones. These stones can also be formed when the gallbladder fails to regularly release its bile.
No pain occurs during the creation of the gallstones, regardless of which the above mentioned etiologies led to their formation. Gallstones vary in size and can be as small as an individual grain of sand. Gallstones of this dimension are known as silent gallstones because they easily pass through both the cystic duct and the common bile duct, and cause no pain or discomfort. People never even know they had them.
However, gallstones can also be the size of a marble or even a ping-pong ball, which cannot pass through the either duct, and cause a severe amount of pain and discomfort. These larger, painful stones are known as symptomatic gallstones and, as the name suggests, there are some very specific symptoms associated with them.
Sharp, sudden pain in the upper right area of the abdomen is indicative of a gallstone...