India Pharma Outlook Team | Thursday, 21 August 2025
Dr. Anushtup De, Senior Consultant and Head - General & Minimally Invasive Surgery at Sarvodaya Hospital, Faridabad, explained that improvements in gallbladder surgery and perioperative care have changed the treatment results for high-risk patients.
He noted that laparoscopic cholecystectomy has been established as a safe and reliable procedure for most patients; however, there is a high-risk group of patients with very high risks of complications and mortality (e.g., elderly patients, patients with heart, lung or kidney disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, or seriously ill patients.
Dr. De stressed that, if there are no contraindications, early surgery is often the best treatment option for high-risk patients, assuming there is an accomplished, experienced minimally invasive surgery team in place. For patients who are unfit for surgery at the time of their presentation, they can be managed conservatively with antibiotics and supportive care until the patient is stable enough to come back for an elective operation.
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He highlighted the option of alternate procedures such as percutaneous gallbladder drainage (PT-GBD), endoscopic ultrasound-guided drainage (EUS-GBD), and endoscopic transpapillary drainage (ET-GBD) as valuable options, especially for unstable or critically ill patients.
In the future, he observed that robotic surgery tools are being developed for the surgical suite as well as AI-based predictive software for assessment; hopefully, these tools will enable us to provide even safer and more precise interventions. Dr. De concluded that gallbladder disease in the high-risk patient population will be safer to manage thanks to all of these advancements and that outcomes were steadily improving.
