Study shows gallstone causes
PA-AAP Melbourne Unless people radically changed their diets, surgical removal of gall bladders would become mandatory dr as frequent as tonsil removal, a surgical researcher has said. Dr Luis Vitetta, surgical research fellow at Melbourne’s Repatriation General Hospital, said about 30,000 Australians were having biliary tract surgery each year. “Unless our diets do a 180-degree turn to lower cholesterol intake, this figure can only increase at a terrifying cost to the community. “Doctors have suspected diet was the main cause of cholsterol gallstones for a long time, but the latest Australian surveys indicate a higher prevalence of biliary disease than previously reported, and one of the highest in the world,” Dr Vitetta said. Dr Vitetta said Australians must avoid foods which were rich in fats and refined sugars, and eat
more plant foods, fruit, nuts and vegetables to reduce the incidence of cholesterol gallstones and other biliary diseases. About 1.4 million Australians were suffering gallstone disease, many of them “walking around unaware of it.” Dr Vitetta and Dr Avni Sali, of Melbourne University’s surgery department at the Repatriation Hospital, surveyed 613 post-mortem subjects between 1981 and 1983. They showed that 36.5 per cent of those studied has suffered some form of biliary disease. An associated study of 310 gall-bladder operations found that 84.7 per cent of gall-stones removed from females and 61.8 per cent from males were cholsterol stones. Dr Vitetta said 85 per cent of the women patients and 73 per cent of the men were overweight. “People are eating too much food with high levels of animal fat and sugar and not enough plant food.”
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Press, 4 February 1986, Page 15
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271Study shows gallstone causes Press, 4 February 1986, Page 15
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