A pear-shaped sac 7 to 10 cm long that holds only about 30 to 50 mL yet concentrates its contents several times over
Gallbladder — it stores and concentrates bile.
Anatomy · Organs & viscera
Gallbladder
A pear-shaped sac holding about 30 to 50 mL
Right upper abdomen · biliary system
The gallbladder is a small, pear-shaped sac tucked into a shallow fossa on the underside of the liver, between the right lobe and the quadrate lobe. It stores and concentrates bile made by the liver and squeezes it out through the cystic duct into the common bile duct when a fatty meal arrives. Its rounded fundus pokes below the edge of the liver, where it meets the abdominal wall at the tip of the ninth costal cartilage.
How to spot them
- ▸A green-tinged pear-shaped sac 7 to 10 cm long on the underside of the liver, with fundus, body and neck
- ▸The neck tapers into the S-shaped cystic duct, which joins the common hepatic duct to form the common bile duct
- ▸The fundus projects past the lower edge of the liver at the tip of the ninth costal cartilage, in the angle between the right rectus abdominis and the costal margin
- ▸A small pouch at its neck, Hartmann's pouch, is where stones tend to lodge
What to know
Its fundus meets the front of the abdomen where the right rectus abdominis edge crosses the ninth costal cartilage
Murphy's point, the surface marking of the gallbladder fundus.
A test in which the patient stops breathing in as the examiner's fingers press under the right ribs
Murphy's sign — a sign of acute cholecystitis, inflammation of the gallbladder.
A small pouch on the neck of this organ where gallstones commonly become impacted
Hartmann's pouch of the gallbladder.
A triangle bounded by the cystic duct, the common hepatic duct and the underside of the liver, which surgeons must identify before removing an organ
Calot's triangle (hepatocystic triangle) in cholecystectomy of the gallbladder.
Its S-shaped outflow duct has a spiral fold in its lining and joins the common hepatic duct
The cystic duct, with the spiral valve of Heister, draining the gallbladder.
Sits in a fossa on the underside of the liver between the right and quadrate lobes
The gallbladder fossa of the liver.
Key ideas
- Bile made in the liver flows into the gallbladder while the sphincter of Oddi is closed; there its water is absorbed, making it far more concentrated. Cholecystokinin, released when fat reaches the duodenum, makes the gallbladder contract.
- Because the body copes without it, cholecystectomy for gallstones is one of the most common operations, first performed by laparoscopy in 1985 in Germany by Erich Mühe.
Quick-fire facts
- •It is about 7 to 10 cm long and 3 to 4 cm wide, holding 30 to 50 mL.
- •Its parts are the fundus, body, infundibulum and neck; Hartmann's pouch is a bulge at the infundibulum.
- •The cystic artery, usually a branch of the right hepatic artery, supplies it and runs within Calot's triangle.
- •The gallbladder and cystic duct join the common hepatic duct to form the common bile duct, which meets the pancreatic duct at the ampulla of Vater.
- •Murphy's point is at the tip of the ninth costal cartilage, and Murphy's sign is arrest of inspiration on palpation there, named after the American surgeon John Benjamin Murphy.
- •Courvoisier's law says a palpable gallbladder with painless jaundice is unlikely to be caused by gallstones.
- •The wall has no submucosa, and outpouchings of the mucosa are called Rokitansky-Aschoff sinuses.
- •A calcified 'porcelain gallbladder' carries an increased risk of cancer.
Drill it — 8 cards
1 / 8new card