A recent study indicated that many patients who suffer from gallstones and abdominal pain do not feel much improvement after gallbladder removal, which means that this surgery may not always be necessary.
Treatment guidelines followed in many countries recommend laparoscopic cholecystectomy when a patient has abdominal pain associated with the presence of stones. But when the emergency is not there, there is no consensus on the criteria on which doctors decide who patients can avoid surgery, receive medication treatment, and lifestyle-changing tips.
To conduct the current study, the researchers tested whether patients with gallbladder problems and receiving treatment in an outpatient setting would improve better if surgeons followed stricter criteria for deciding on surgery rather than relying solely on physicians ’diligence.
537 patients of the study received traditional medical care, while conditions were set for 530 others to undergo surgery, including acute pain episodes, persistent pain for 15 to 30 minutes, the extension of this pain to the back, and the presence of pain in the upper abdomen that responds to analgesics.
The results of pain relief did not differ between the two groups, as it continued in more than 40 percent of patients after 12 months.
However, the conditions resulted in reducing the number of those who underwent surgery in the second group compared to the first group by a difference of 75 percent, indicating that surgeons need to reconsider the necessity of eradication in all cases and the criteria on which they recommend surgery according to the study published in the journal The Lancet.
Dr. Philip de Rover, co-researcher of the study and gastroenterologist at Radboud University Hospital in Nijmegen, Netherlands, said patients should "know that there is a high risk that gallbladder removal will not be a solution to all of their abdominal pain."
"Advice and participation in decision-making is a good way to reduce unnecessary surgeries ... Patients should put their symptoms on a list and their doctors must tell them the symptoms that are likely to disappear after surgery and the symptoms that are less likely or cannot be resolved," he added by email. Surgery. "
