Woman suffering stomach ache and heartburn is stunned after doctors find 12,000 GALLSTONES inside her

A doctor was astonished to remove a staggering 11,950 gallstones from inside an Indian woman  - thought to be a new world record.

Minati Mondal, 51, had been suffering from crippling stomach pain and acid reflux for two months. Two weeks ago, she was admitted to Debdoot Sevayan Hospital in Kolkata, West Bengal, in eastern India.

After conducting tests and ultrasounds, doctors found she was suffering from a severe case of gallstones.

These are balls made of cholesterol and salts that form in the gallbladder, a little pear-shaped organ underneath the liver that stores bile.

Dr Makhan Lala Saha, a gastrointestinal endosurgeon at the hospital, said he was anticipating large number of stones but was still shocked when the number crossed the 5,000 mark.

He removed nearly 12,000 stones in an hour long laparoscopic surgery, where surgeon access the inside of the abdomen and pelvis through a 'keyhole' cut, without having to make large incisions in the skin.

Dr Saha said: 'I was astonished to see the large number of stones that we extracted from the gall bladder of this patient.

'I had never thought a gall bladder could contain so many stones.

Gallstones are made of cholesterol and salts that form in the gallbladder, a little pear-shaped organ underneath the liver that stores bile.

Bile ducts are the tiny tubes that carry bile — a liquid that helps the body digest fats — from the liver to the gallbladder and then into the digestive system.

While you can live with gallstones with no symptoms, if they start to block the gallbladder they cause pain and nausea and a potentially fatal infection.

They can also stop the flow of bile out of the gallbladder and liver, so it backs up - causing jaundice.

While gallstones are common, a fatty diet can raise the risk, especially in women, although it's not clear why. 'It took my assistants four hours to count the number of the stones that were between 2mm and 5mm in size. It took us 50 minutes to remove them.'

The doctor has written to the Royal College of Pathologists in London to keep the specimen in the museum. And it is now thought the huge amount of gallstones removed could be a new world record.

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