How many gallbladders are removed each year

Release Date: April 3, Share Fast Facts Hopkins study: are we removing too many gallbladders? For the Media Contacts: Patrick Smith psmith88 jhmi. Jania Matthews. Find Physicians Specializing In Gastroenterology Gastrointestinal Diseases Pancreatitis.

Related Services Gastroenterology and Hepatology. Previous Next. Show me more I want to Contact Information Contact us or find a patient care location. This suggests that surgeons need to rethink whether gallstone surgery is necessary in every case and reconsider their criteria for recommending operations, researchers write in The Lancet. To prove this, researchers estimated that there would need to be at least 5 percentage points separating the proportion of patients who were pain-free one year after surgery.

With restrictive criteria, 56 percent of patients were pain-free after 12 months, as were 60 percent of patients with usual care. Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania recently died after complications from the procedure after doctors "hit his intestines" during surgery, a source close to the late congressman told CNN.

Murtha underwent the scheduled laparoscopic surgery at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, on January 28, to remove his gallbladder, and was discharged.

Three days later, he was admitted to Virginia Hospital Center's Intensive Care Unit because of major complications from surgery, the hospital said in a statement. He died there Monday at age At most, only one out of every 1, patients dies during gallbladder removal, according to the American College of Surgeons.

Factors that increase the risk of death include gangrene, a burst gallbladder or severe diseases. The laparoscopic surgery is a safe, minimally invasive procedure, said Dr. Out of hundreds of thousands of cases, only a handful result in damage to the intestines, he said. Precise statistics are not available.

Preparing for the holidays? Most people who have their gallbladders removed are glad to see them go, but for a small percentage, the operation seems to cause bowel problems.

Like your appendix and spleen, the gallbladder is something you can do without. Each year, about a million Americans have their gallbladders surgically removed because the organ has become inflamed cholecystitis or contains gallstones. If the gallstones become lodged in a duct, the result can be excruciating pain.

Serious infection and inflammation are risks, too. Most people are more than happy to bid their gallbladders adieu if that's what it takes to make the pain or threat of complications go away.

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