The standard treatment is laparoscopic surgery to remove the gall bladder, which produces the gallstones. In the study reported in the Annals of Surgery, surgeons removed the gall bladders of 25 patients with mild gallstone pancreatitis within 48 hours of admission and operated on 24 other patients after lab tests and physical examinations found their enzyme levels had normalized. (One patient was excluded from the study after developing other unrelated medical complications.)

The researchers found operating on the patients within 48 hours of admission decreased the overall length of hospital stays from four to three days when compared with the patients who waited for the symptoms to subside before undergoing surgery.

"Operating within 48 hours of admission is ideally suited to patients with mild gallstone pancreatitis who don't demonstrate evidence of cholangitis, a bacterial infection, and don't require aggressive fluid resuscitation," said Dr. de Virgilio.

Source: Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (LA BioMed)