If gallstones in pancreas?

Question

it will interupt fat digestion??

Answer 1

The reason that this comes up at all regards the anatomy of the hepato-biliary and pancreatic duct system.  What you're describing is the condition know as "gallstone pancreatitis" and the problem is potentially deadly (although usually not).  It's much more complex than just an interruption in the flow of fat digesting enzymes from the pancreas!

First, lets get clear on some background.

The liver makes bile which is a digestive juice.  The role of bile is to act much like soap.  Soap helps emulsify oily material in water so that you can wash it off.  Bile  helps emulsify oily food in the otherwise watery environment of food and fluid going down the digestive tract.  The problem is that bile can precipitate as a solid in the gallbladder if the chemistry is set up for it.  The gallbladder absorbs water out of the bile to concentrate it and make it more potent and easier to store.  During this concentrating step, solids form, and aggregate into stones.  

Normally the stones just sit there in the gallbladder.  20% of the population will have stones by the age of 65, but only about 1 or 2 percent per year of people who have stones ever have any symptoms at all.  The most common symptom is gallbladder pain that results from the muscular gallbladder wall contracting against the resistance of stones.  Of people who have stones with some symptoms, a fraction of these will go on to have further complications.  Gallstone pancreatitis eventually occurs in somewhere between 2 and 8 percent of people who have symptomatic gallstones.

Gallstone pancreatitis happens when gallstones exit from the gallbladder and go down the bile duct on the way to the intestine.  The end of the bile duct actually passes through the head of the pancreas and joins with the pancreatic duct as they enter together into the second portion of the duodenum, only inches downstream of the stomach.  In general, the gallstones or gallstone material doesn't actually go up the pancreatic duct.  One of several things may happen.  Either a stone will impact in the end of the bile duct and compress the pancreatic duct which is directly adjacent, or the stone/stone material will wedge in the short portion of duct which is a common channel fed into by both the bile duct and the pancreatic duct.  Either way, the functional result is the same; the pancreatic duct is obstructed.  However, even if the pancreatic duct is NOT obstructed, there can still be problems when the stones in the bile duct cause inflammation.  Since the bile duct is going through the pancreas, the inflammation can spred to the pancreas even if the duct is not blocked.

So, when a gallstone causes problems for the pancreas, the end result is inflammation.  Inflammation of the pancreas is called "pancreatitis" and it's potentially a devastating process, even though it's most often not.  Gallstone pancreatitis is typically a mild form of pancreatitis compared to what happens when patients get pancreatitis for other reasons.  

The problem with pancreatitis is that the pancreas makes digestive enzymes.  These are powerful destructive enzymes that are designed to liquify chunks of food in the intestine.  Normally, they're released into the intestine before they're activated.  The intestinal wall is capable of containing and managing this chemical reaction.  However, when the pancreas becomes inflammed, the enzymes get activated right there in the pancreas.  The pancreas is NOT capable of containing the reaction and the digestive enzymes actually digest pancreas!  They sneak into the blood stream and start damaging other thigns too!  They even leak out of the pancreas and get all over the outsides of the intestines and abdominal organs, literally digesting them away from the outside.  A bad case can be a disaster.

People who get bad pancreatitis become critically ill.  The ones who survive are often in the ICU with organ system failures for weeks or sometimes months.  They may need multiple surgeries to clean out hunks of dead liquifying tissue.  It's really really bad.  

Gallstone pancreatitis is typically very mild compared to that.  There's a few days of pancreatic pain, and maybe some signs of pancreatic juice having leaked out into the system, but not usually organ failures.  Within a number of days without the stimulation of food (which activates the pancreas) the inflammation subsides and the patient can undergo an operation to remove the gallbladder and clear the duct of stones.  Without the gallbladder, the source of stone formation is gone and the risk of further stone related events is eliminated.

Some people get a different pancreatic problem called chronic pancreatitis (as opposed to the acute pancreatitis that happens with gallstone disease).  Chronic pancreatitis is most commonly alcohol related.  People probably get lots of small episodes of acute pancreatitis that they just ignore and eventually the organ gets shrivelled and scarred.  It can become ineffe

Answer 2

i have had a pancreatic attack  that is where your gall bladder drops a stone and plugs the pancreatic duct it started out as indigestion then went to feeling like food intervenes  then it got worse from there this happened in the space of 2 to 4 hours  

i ended up in the hospital,no food for a week just intervenes drip to keep my fluids up to give my pancreas a rest , after that i was on a diabetic diet until my operation mine was so bad i had to have my

pancreas sewn to my stomach to remove cysts off of my pancreas

all i can say is do not fool around and get checked out i was lucky that

i am not on insulin right now to break down the sugars i hope this helps

this link might give you more information

http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/library/DS/001...