Cholecystitis

A 51 yr old mother of 3 children came to see me complaining of right upper abdominal pain, fever, vomiting, loss of appetite. An ultrasound scan on this patient and blood investigations confirmed this to be a condition called cholecystitis.
Cholecystitis is inflammation or infection of the gallbladder. This can be in a gallbladder which contain gallstones and we call this ‘calculus cholecystitis’ and when this happens in the absence of a stone we call this ‘acalculus cholecystitis’.
If the patient is not treated for this condition they can collect pus inside the gallbladder and the bacteria can get into the blood and patient can end up with a severe life threatening condition called ‘septicemia’ and even die of the same.
Cholecystitis can be treated very easily and cured completely. Mainstay of treatment is to control the infection and inflammation with antibiotics and other medication. However all these patients should undergo removal of their gallbladders. This patient came to me within the 1st 24hr after experiencing these symptoms first and had gallbladder removed (Cholecystectomy) on the same day by a minimally invasive keyhole surgery. But if this patient presented more than 72hrs after then I would have treated her with medicine in the form of injections of antibiotics and other medication first. After waiting for six weeks or more following her recovery we would have carried out the same operation to remove her gallbladder.
Important message in this condition is patients have to undergo removal of gallbladder (Cholecystectomy) at some point of time. After the initial episode of cholecystitis they tend to get repeat attacks and each of them will make the surgery difficult due to bowel(intestine) getting stuck to the gallbladder and due to formation of organized adhesions.