Gastrointestinal explanations

Peptic ulcer disease

The stomach is an organ that has walls.  When you eat, your stomach makes acid to help break down the food. To protect the stomach walls from this acid, we have a lining between the acid and the stomach walls. If this lining layer wears down, this allows the stomach acid to eat away at the stomach wall, causing an ulcer. This can cause pain in your stomach.

To help with this pain, we can try to lower the amount of acid in your stomach with medication.

Gallstones

The gallbladder is a small pouch-like organ that lives in the top right of your tummy, just below the liver. It stores juices that help to digest fat. When you eat, the gallbladder squeezes, and pumps these juices into your bowel.

Gallstones usually form when there is too much cholesterol in these juices. These gallstones may break down on their own, but they can also get bigger. When the gallbladder squeezes to release its juice, one of the gallstones can get caught in the narrow opening of the gallbladder, and cause pain.  

We can give painkillers to help with the pain but in severe cases, we normally treat this by removing the gallstones and the gallbladder that contains them.

Cirrhosis

The liver is an important organ. If the liver is damaged, it can fix itself. However, if the liver keeps getting damaged and healing itself, it starts to leave a scar. Your liver can keep working when it is scarred but cirrhosis can eventually lead to liver failure.

Link to the patient’s symptoms e.g., ascites:

The liver makes proteins. Fluid travels around your body in tubes. These proteins keep the fluid in those tubes. In cirrhosis, if your liver isn’t working as well, and there is less protein, fluid can leak out of these tubes and enter the spaces in your body, like your tummy. This is why you have swelling in your stomach.

Cirrhosis cannot be cured but there are many changes you can make to your lifestyle and habits that can stop it from getting worse.