Gallstones – Overview

Transcript

You have been experiencing pain in your abdomen and after consultation with your doctor, they have diagnosed you with gallstones. But what are gallstones exactly? Gallstones are hardened deposits of digestive fluid that form inside your gallbladder. This small pear-shaped organ sits to the right of your abdomen just below your liver. The gallbladder stores a grainy yellow fluid called bile and releases it into the small intestine during the digestive process. Bile is normally produced in the liver and secreted into what we call a billary tree, which is a network of ducts that eventually merge into one central duct, also known as the common hepatic duct. The gallbladder is connected to the common hepatic duct via what we call the cystic duct. Gallstones can vary in size from being as large as a golf ball to as tiny as a grain of sand, sometimes also referred to as sludge.