[The trend of the gallstone disease in China over the past decade]

The present study is the second national survey on 3911 srugically treated cases of gallstones which was collected from 33 hospitals of 5 provinces and 2 main cities of China and aims at reevaluating and comparing the trend of the gallstone disease in China since the first national survey was completed 10 years ago. The results showed that cholelithiasis remained one of the commonest surgical diseases and accounted for 11.5% of overall hospitalized patients during the same period of time and it occurred mostly in females of over 50 years of age, with a female-male ratio of 2.57 Vs 1.80% of the patients with single positioned gallstones had their stones in gallbladder and was mainly cholesterol stone in nature while pigmented bile duct stones was found only in 10% of the patients, which made the gallbladder Vs bile duct stone ratio and the cholesterol Vs pigment stone ratio a significant difference as 7.36 : 1 and 3.4 : 1 respectively when compared with the results of 1.5 : 1 and 3.4 : 1 from the first national survey, 10 years ago. A significantly decreased incidence of biliary ascariasis and biliary bacterial infection rate as well as the dietary changes from low protein, fat high vegetable to the opposite were directly relevant to the above alterations on the location and the type of the gallstones.