 Hi, I am Dr. Ritra Ghosh, consultant general surgeon at the department of general and minimal access surgery, Manipal Hospital, Whitefield, Bangalore. The gallbladder is an organ which is located under the liver in the right upper part of the body. It generally stores bile which is digestive juice and it is liberated after we eat food and it helps in fat digestion. Gallstones are stones which are found within the gallbladder. The stones are made up of cholesterol and calcium and they are generally silent but at times they produce symptoms like pain when it needs a medical attention. Considering risk factors for gallstones I would like to say there are few factors like our diet which is rich in cholesterol or fat, a prolonged fasting state can even cause gallstones and even a diet which is of very low calorie for wet loss, sudden onset wet loss can precipitate gallstones. These are the common risk factors for having a gallstone. The most common symptom of having a gallstone is called dyspepsia. It's like an indigestion when we have food and we feel very early a fullness in the stomach and after a heavy meal sometimes. Apart from that there might be severe right upper abdominal pain, vomiting, fever, even some life threatening complications like colonitis which is an infection of the bile duct and pancreatitis due to obstruction of the stone of the pancreatic duct. The first and foremost thing is to come to a hospital and meet a doctor. It may be a surgeon or a physician who will guide you for a scan which is an upper abdominal ultrasound scan that will show the gallstones in the gallbladder with its complications. For treatment purpose the only thing which is most feasible for having a complication of a gallstone is surgery. It's the laparoscopic surgery we perform for gallstone disease. It's called laparoscopic cholecystectomy where a minimally invasive method is applied to remove the gallbladder through small pores in the stomach and this is the only method of treatment for gallstone disease. The gallbladder surgery is a very routinely performed surgery in the hospital. It's a minimally invasive method where small holes are made in the abdomen through which the gallbladder is taken out. It's well tolerated by the patient generally 2-3 days after the surgery. The patient is back to his or her normal life. The surgery is not painful. First of all it's done in anesthesia and since it's a laparoscopy as I first told it's a minimally invasive method where only 3-4 small incisions are made in the stomach. Procedure is pretty well tolerated as for the pain is concerned. It hardly has any pain as a very fast recovery can tolerate food from the very next day and can be discharged the very next day itself from the hospital. There is no specific side effect of the surgery. It's pretty well tolerated. The only thing we tell our patients to avoid a too much fatty food after 2-3 months of the procedure. There is only one chance of gaining little weight. That is also not very well documented few patients we see but otherwise other than that there is no significant side effect of gallbladder surgery. Yes as I told before when I was talking about the risk factors it can be prevented by having a healthy diet not having too much of fat in the food low cholesterol diet apart from that we avoid prolonged fasting phase and also not to go for a sudden weight loss with a very low calorie diet which can also precipitate gallstones. So a healthy lifestyle can definitely prevent a gallstone.