A STUDY OF CORRELATION BETWEEN TOTAL CHOLESTEROL, TOTAL BILIRUBIN, CALCIUM AND INORGANIC PHOSPHATE OF GALLSTONE AND SERA OF THE STONE FORMERS

Gallbladder cancer appears to be a late complication of cholelithiasis, and in our part of the world the incidence of gallbladder cancer is very high. A thorough understanding on gallstone disease thus becomes paramount. The major chemical components of gallstones are cholesterol, bilirubin and calcium. In our study we have chemically analyzed the 40 gallstones obtained from patients who had undergone cholecystectomy and quantitatively analyzed the parameters which are total cholesterol, total bilirubin, calcium and inorganic phosphate both in the serum of the stone formers and in their respective gallstones, and determined the correlation if any present between the serum and the stone values. In our study we found that majority of the gallstones were pigment gallstones, followed by mixed gallstone and cholesterol gallstones. We have found a positive correlation between total bilirubin in serum and total bilirubin in pigment gallstones. Which has led us to a conclusion that hyperbilirubinemia play an important role in the formation of pigment gallstones and that detection of hyperbilirubinemia in a suspect group must further be investigated for asymptomatic gallstone disease.