Sonographer didn’t give number of gallsts

[Verbena17]

Hi,
Any sonographers out there?

How unusual would it be for someone to go in for an ultrasound to look at stomach, gall bladder, liver etc and to have gallstones found (told by sonographer a few/quite a few but can’t remember exactly), only to be told by GP with the report that the sonographer just wrote ‘multiple/several gallstones of 7mm’.

The GP says “I’m not concerned”, even though he’s basing the ‘I’m not concerned’ on an unknown quantity. “Could be 3 stones, could be whatever”.
After a call to the private clinic who did the scan on behalf of NHS, they said they can’t tell the patient directly and to ask for GP to request the number of stones.
Patient speaks again to GP, who says there’s no need to know.
Patient says ‘ok’....even though the patient really wants to know how many gallstones they have! Thought GP’s are supposed to encourage patients to get involved in their own care.

Surely it’s a bit like a sonographer doing a scan of your heart and saying ‘you have something wrong with your heart but you don’t need to know any details’.

How normal is it not to be told the number of stones? The patient is having some symptoms but quite mild.
I’m really annoyed the GP won’t request that the scan team sends him the number.

Have never seen a report with an exact count. Suspect it'd be guesswork if there were multiple stones.

But you’d have thought if she could measure some, she would have a rough idea....like, ‘more than 10’ or ‘more than 5’ etc.

The fact that they said they don’t send a copy of the report to an NHS patient but would send it to a private patient says a lot.

I think it's the size more than the quantity that matters, it tells them how likely a stone will be to block the bile duct. I had just one stone, it was a beast at about 3cm x 2cm.

Hi :)
Gallstones cause shadowing on ultrasound which means you can only see the ones at the top. They're also mobile structures and it's very hard to count a load of stones moving around and causing shadows over each other. This is why sonographers will provide a general description like a 'few', 'several', 'multiple' or 'compacted'. The size is more significant than the number because it's usually the small ones that cause problems by getting stuck in the duct.

Also most people who have gallstones don't even know, so unless they're causing you problems they won't do anything about it.

I’ve only ever stated one, two or three gallstones in a report, otherwise it’s multiple. In many cases it’d be an impossible task to give you an exact number anyway (see @ALah ‘s comment), as well as being totally useless. It doesn’t matter the number of gallstones, what matters is whether they’re giving you symptoms.
Hope that reassures you a bit

Are you the patient?

Why does it matter? I had gallstones years ago and I never knew how many or what size - even after surgery. It's completely irrelevant.

My report said “multiple”. Loads of people have gallstones, it’s whether they cause problems (and no one who has had billiary colic would describe it as mild) that would determine whether something should be done.

I was told I have enough to make a necklace but no issues for years...

I had one at 5.5 but never found out if that was CM or mm.. I'm now assuming that maybe cm??

Thanks everyone.
no, it wasn’t me - I had my gallbladder removed years ago and I had a very specific 15 and had loads of bouts of colic (felt like death!)

This is a relative but since giving up dairy, has had no symptoms at all.

Thanks, for your replies.