By name, everyone knows kidney stones or gallstones – and is glad if they don’t have any. But there are other organs that can be affected by stone disease: In salivary glands, with stones in the pancreas being particularly dangerous, and in the gastrointestinal tract, stone formation is possible and can hugely disrupt normal organ function.
What are stone conditions?
Stone diseases are diseases caused by deposits in fluid-filled body organs such as salivary glands, gallbladder or kidney. If you examine the fluid in question (i.e., saliva, bile, or urine) more closely, you will find that it contains many different components (minerals, electrolytes, fats, sugars, etc.) in addition to water, all of which are dissolved in the fluid.
As soon as the amount of liquid is too small for the dissolved components, microscopic crystals are formed at first, but then increasingly larger clumps – also called grit or sand – and then downright stones. Smaller clumps can still be partially formed back or are flushed out of the organ with the fluid in which they are located – but as soon as they have reached a certain size, they usually impede the normal function of the organ in which they are located: For example, they block drainage or lead to inflammation of the organ, as they mechanically irritate their surroundings with their rough surface. Stones are often only discovered when they cause discomfort – that is, as soon as the actual stone condition occurs.
What are the different types of stone disease?
The best known are certainly gallstones, which almost every sixth adult in Germany has, even if not everyone knows of their existence. They form when there is an unfavorable mixing ratio of bile acids, fats and cholesterol in the gallbladder and either go unnoticed for a long time or eventually lead to painful inflammation of the gallbladder.
As soon as stones are flushed into the bile duct with the bile, things become problematic: the stone can block the bile duct and thus obstruct the outflow of bile. The bile duct ends with a small opening in the duodenum, through which the stone must pass in order to then leave the body via the intestines. Often, it is precisely this bottleneck that is the big problem: the stone gets stuck and blocks the outflow of bile and, unfortunately, digestive secretions that come from the pancreas.
The outflow of the pancreas leads directly into the bile duct, so that gallstones can also migrate into the pancreatic ducts. Stones then form in the pancreas and the digestive secretions of the pancreas digest the gland itself instead of the food. This dangerous condition is often the cause of acute pancreatitis, an inflammation of the pancreas.
Kidney stones are not quite as common as gallstones, but as many as four percent of the German population have deposits of calcium salts and uric acid that can be so large that they line the entire kidney pelvis like a “spout.” Once they reach a certain size, the stones can only pass through the narrow ureter to the urinary bladder with the help of strong, painful muscle contractions, obstructing the outflow of urine and thus causing renal colic.
Stones in the urinary bladder may continue to grow there under certain circumstances and are then not excreted with the urine via the urethra. Under certain circumstances, they are the cause of recurrent bladder infections.
Stones in the oral salivary glands are not common, but often cause severe pain. Each person has three paired salivary glands, the best known and largest of which is the parotid gland. However, the smaller salivary glands, located on the inside of the lower jaw, are most commonly affected by salivary stones – their excretory duct is very long and kinked, and the saliva produced here is much more viscous than that of the parotid gland and is transported upward from below against the force of gravity.
Fecal stones consist of massively thickened feces and often pass unnoticed with the stool. Unfortunately, however, they also like to settle in the appendix, where they trigger appendicitis or, when they reach a certain size, lead to a life-threatening intestinal obstruction.
