Surgery of the gallbladder

Excerpt

Diseases of the gallbladder are the most frequent in the gastrointestinal tract and account for most hospital admissions due to abdominal discomfort worldwide. In most cases gallbladder stones are diagnosed. According to the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL), nearly 20% of Europeans have gallstones and nearly half of them develop symptoms over their lifetime [1]. This results in approximately 900,000 gallbladder surgeries in Europe performed annually [2, 3]. In Austria nearly 19,000 patients are operated on their gallbladder yearly [4]. Preoperative management often reveals diseases wider than gallstones alone. These findings are frequently misdiagnosed and occasionally lead to uncertainty in the correct management or are only diagnosed intraoperatively as incidental findings. In the presented issue of the journal, pre-, peri-, and intraoperative findings and problems are addressed and discussed with respect to the current literature. Pathways are elaborated to develop pre- and intraoperative policies to overcome boundaries in gallbladder surgery. …