RESULTS IN CHOLECYSTECTOMY

Chronic diseases of the gallbladder and bile ducts are at present generally conceded to be the most frequent organic cause of dyspepsia. No chapter in modern medicine is more interesting than the one dealing with the rapid advancement in the recognition of the gallbladder as a cause of gastric symptoms. If one consults the textbooks and reviews the literature of little more than a decade ago, one finds the gallbladder held responsible only for the illness of those patients who suffered recurrent attacks of biliary colic. The rapid advance in knowledge of gallbladder disease is due almost entirely to the clinician's careful study of the symptomatology, aided to a great extent by the roentgenologist's ability to rule out organic changes in the stomach and duodenum and, of late years, by cholecystography. In a recent study1of 3,000 patients complaining of gastric symptoms, the gallbladder and bile ducts were considered