Do You Really Need a Special Diet After Gallbladder Surgery? Expert Truths

We've got a leading comment that basically said that they found that it isn't true that there are no linked illnesses caused by the removal of the gallbladder.

Her body finds it harder to break down fat and she's had constant IBS since the removal of her gallbladder.

With respect to individuals who experience a change in their bowel habit after having a gallbladder removal, it can be that the gallbladder removal does change slightly your bile metabolism.

How you relate that to a change in the bowel habit is often quite difficult.

And it's usually secondary to something either that happened during the operation or that removing the gallbladder has unmasked a separate illness that has actually come to the fore since the gallbladder was removed.

So when we consent patients for gallbladder removal, if there's no obvious gallstones and inflammation in the gallbladder causing the symptoms, but we think the gallbladder is the cause of it, we will very often say to patients, we're going to remove your gallbladder because that's the only thing we can see that might be causing your symptoms.

But there is up to a one in four chance that we remove your gallbladder and actually things will either be no better or worse because actually it's not the gallbladder causing them.

We think it is, but we might be wrong.

So when people have got obvious large gallstones and an inflamed gallbladder, it's pretty certain that by removing that you're going to make them better and they're not going to suffer post-op disease.

further symptoms in a fair proportion of gallbladders that we remove anything up to about one in five there are signs that the gallbladder is not happy and there may be what we call microlithiasis tiny stones or a bit of sludge in the gallbladder and people are getting symptoms related to gallbladder type pain we can say look We've done all the tests.

There's nothing else we can find other than your gallbladder's got a bit of sludge in it and doesn't look happy.

So we're going to take that out and see if you get better.

Talking about conditions that were probably there beforehand, before removing the gallbladder, you can find no other cause for other than actually we need to remove your gallbladder because you've got gallstones and an inflammation, but it's not that that has caused these other issues.

like IBS or diarrhea, it was there beforehand and it's just escalated it.

It's highlighted it a bit.

It

can.

So when we remove the gallbladder, I will backtrack on what I said last time, your biometabolism does change.

Right.

But for the vast majority of people who have a gallbladder removal, and it is the commonest general surgery operation in the world, now it's overtaken appendicitis there are so many people having their gallbladders removed when you remove the gallbladder biometabolism does change and for some people it's less than one percent that change in the biometabolism is manifest as post gallbladder removal or post cholecystectomy diarrhea pcd and that's not the same as bile acid malabsorption but it's a similar kind of condition where Because the bile is now constantly going into the intestine, it can overwhelm people with a sensitive intestine and the bile acids get into the colon and irritate it, causing the colon to eject it as diarrhea.

I think you're right.

For the vast majority of people, I'm one of them, there have been no changes since having the gallbladder out, other than I no longer have gallstones or the pain from those gallstones.

And in fact, T has said she's had her gallbladder removed and she lives a perfectly normal life without any medication or any special diet.

She's grateful it was removed.

The pain was horrendous.