Gallstones

Ten percent of the American population has gallstones. And, by age 60, almost 30 percent of all men and women have gallstones. Many patients with gallstones never experience any symptoms. However, when gallbladder pain does occur, it is sudden, severe, and steady and is felt in the upper abdomen. When a gallstone becomes permanently lodged in the main bile duct, the bile flow is blocked and cannot reach the intestine. Bile, therefore, backs up in the liver and spills into the blood. The skin turns yellow, the urine dark and, perhaps, the stool white, since it is bile that colors the stool brown.