Gallbladder Removal May Be Too Common

A surgeon and his theatre team perform keyhole surgery to remove a gallbladder at at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England, on March 16, 2010. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

People with acute biliary pancreatitis who don’t have their gallbladders out often do just fine, despite standard guidelines that recommend the surgery, a study finds.

More than two-thirds of study patients who declined the surgery didn’t return to the hospital for pancreatitis over a four-year follow-up period, researchers found.