Gallbladder Bile Composition in Patients With Gallstones and Healthy Patients

Gallstones constitute an entity known from antiquity, which have been found even in Egyptian mummies. In elder Greece, Tralliano discovered that gallstones are formed in the liver. Vesalio and Falopio described gallstones inside de gallbladder after a human body dissection and in 1882 Langenbuch performed the first cholecystectomy with good results, becoming the gold standard technique for cholelithiasis.

Nowadays, this pathology represents a public health problem in developed countries due to its high prevalence, which is getting higher, estimated between a 10 and a 15% of the population.

However, gallstones are asymptomatic in the 80% of the cases. In 5 years, a 10-20% of these patients will become symptomatic. The global risk of generating symptoms is about a 2% per year, meanwhile biliary tract complications in asymptomatic patients represent a 0'3% per year.

There are two main types of gallstones. The most common of them (70%) are cholesterol stones, composed of >50% of cholesterol. The other 30% are black pigment stones, with less than 20% of cholesterol in their composition.

The common ways on gallstone formation are: cholesterol supersaturation (due to a liver oversecretion); defects on gallbladder absorption, secretion and motility mechanisms; and higher percentage of deoxycholic acid in the biliary acids due to a slower intestinal movement. All of that leads to supersaturation and cholesterol nucleation.