Leukemia (Blood Cancer)

Colic refers to severe abdominal pain and biliary refers to the bile ducts. Biliary colic happens when gallstones get lodged in the bile ducts which causes temporary severe abdominal pain sometimes this is also called a gallbladder attack because it can come on pretty quick when you eat foods that are high in fat like delicious French fries they make their way to the small intestine and the fatty acids in the fries stimulate cells which are the enteroendocrine cells or hormone-secreting cells of the intestine. These cells secrete cholecystokinin also called CCK into the bloodstream and those hormones make their way to the gallbladder and tell it to squeeze meanwhile CCK relaxes the sphincter of OD, so that the bile can make its way to the duodenum.

Now bile is a fat emulsifier essentially helping to break fats or lipids into small micelles and then pancreatic lipase gets in there and helps break it down into even smaller molecules that can then be absorbed by the villi of the small intestine, now some people develop gallstones which are hard stones that form in the gallbladder and are made up of the components of bile, risk factors for developing gallstones include things like female sex obesity pregnancy and age sometimes remembered by the four f's female fat fertile and 40. Now after having a meal that gallbladder might contract and inject the gallstone into the cystic duct where it gets lodged as the gallbladder contracts against the lodged gallstone it can cause sudden dull pain in the right upper quadrant or epigastrium which can then radiate to the right shoulder typically the pain intensity increases for about 15 minutes and then hit a steady plateau for a few hours but usually less than about 6 hours at which point the gallstone dislodges and rolls back into the gallbladder and the pain subsides.

The pain often starts up several hours after a meal but can also happen frequently at night since laying flat makes it easier for the gallstone to get lodged in the cystic duct other symptoms include nausea vomiting and sweating so biliary colics were that pains temporary, but if the gallstone doesn't dislodge and stays in the cystic duct for longer stretches it can lead to acute cholecystitis or inflammation of the gallbladder which can cause similar symptoms like pain in the right upper quadrant but since there's also a significant amount of inflammation there are more severe symptoms like fever diagnosis of biliary colic is typically based on recurrent symptoms and confirmed by ultrasound of the right upper quadrant. Treatment involves managing pain and other symptoms but a definitive treatment of recurrent biliary colic is cholecystectomy removal of the gallbladder.

All right as a quick recap with biliary colic usually, a gallstone gets lodged in the cystic duct following a fatty meal which tends to cause a steady dull upper right quadrant pain for a few hours which then subsides when the gallstone dislodges helping current and future clinicians.  

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