Grim pictures show 200 GALLSTONES removed from woman’s gut – after she skipped breakfast for 10 years

DOCTORS have removed more than 200 gallstones from a woman’s gut in an operation in China.

The woman went to Guangji Hospital, in Hezhou, after more than ten years of stomach pain.

Tests showed she had a number of gallstones, which medics believed had built up over several years.

Surgeons removed the stones from her gallbladder and bile ducts, some of them as big as eggs.

The woman, identified only as Ms Chen, 45, claimed her pain started more than 10 years ago but her fear of surgery held her back from getting help.

Dr Quanwei Wei, a general surgeon at the hospital, said the number of stones found in her abdomen may have been caused by her skipping breakfast.

Ms Chen told doctors she had not eaten breakfast for eight years and is sometimes too tired to cook a proper meal for dinner when she gets home from work.

Dr Quanwei Wei suggested that, because of the woman’s poor diet, bile in her gall bladder and bile ducts built up and formed the 200 stones.

Gallstones are small stones, usually made of cholesterol, that form in the gallbladder, according to the NHS.

In most cases they don’t cause any symptoms and don’t need to be treated.

But if they become trapped in a duct inside the gallbladder it can trigger intense pain.

When gallstones cause symptoms or complications, it’s known as gallstone disease or cholelithiasis.

The gallbladder is a small organ found underneath the liver that stores and concentrates bile – a liquid produced by the liver to help digest fats.

Gallstones develop because of an imbalance in the chemical make-up of bile in the gallbladder.

In most cases the levels of cholesterol in bile become too high and the excess cholesterol forms into stones.

About one in every ten adults in the UK has gallstones but only a small amount of people develop symptoms.

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