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Previous Volume 328:279-280 January 28, 1993 Number 4 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

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If the lodging of a gallstone at the duodenal papilla can precipitate an attack of acute pancreatitis, it is logical to suppose that the sooner the stone is removed the better the outcome will be. One of the first to explore this hypothesis was the Argentinian surgeon Acosta. Having found that the offending calculus could often be retrieved from the stool of a patient who recovered, Acosta and colleagues showed that urgent surgical (transduodenal) sphincterotomy reduced the mortality rate associated with acute pancreatitis from 16 percent to 2 percent¹. This timely dislodging of an impacted stone might therefore prevent . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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