This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related article  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Diagnosis  • Liver/ Biliary Tract/ Pancreatic Diseases  • Alert me on articles by topic

Jack Pickleman, MD
Maywood, Ill

Arch Surg. 2000;135:1027.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

When first asked by the editor to submit a critique of this study, I was supplied only with the title, and armed with this, I was confident I could trash and burn the work sufficiently to justify the editor's confidence in me. Alas, my generally feisty mood rapidly dissipated on the review of the data that unarguably show the increased cost, in human and financial terms, of the delayed treatment of symptomatic gallstones. This is not the first study that has shown that physician delay, either rooted in medical ignorance or mandated by bureaucratic indifference, can lead to a higher incidence of complications in a group of patients who should sustain very little morbidity and negligible mortality if treated expeditiously at the onset of symptoms. These California data demonstrate that the cases of 44% of the patients treated for gallstones were complicated by the presence of acute . . . [Full Text of this Article]

RELATED ARTICLE

The Spectrum and Cost of Complicated Gallstone Disease in California
Robert E. Glasgow, Michael Cho, Matthew M. Hutter, and Sean J. Mulvihill
Arch Surg. 2000;135(9):1021-1025.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT