Doctor Removes Nearly 12,000 Gallstones in Record-Breaking Surgery

The Operation That Rewrote the Medical Record Books
A routine visit for stomach pain turned into one of the most extraordinary surgical cases in modern medical history, after a doctor in India removed nearly 12,000 gallstones from a single patient’s gallbladder — shattering a record that had stood for over four decades.
What Happened
Minati Mondal, a 51-year-old woman from West Bengal in eastern India, arrived at Debdoot Sevayan Hospital in Kolkata complaining of severe abdominal pain and persistent acid reflux. After initial tests, gastrointestinal surgeon Dr. Makhan Lala Saha determined that the source of her suffering was her gallbladder — though even he could not have anticipated what he was about to find inside it.
The laparoscopic surgery took approximately 50 minutes to complete. What came next took considerably longer.
Once the procedure was finished, Dr. Saha’s team began counting the stones removed from the gallbladder. The count took four full hours.
The final number: 11,950 individual gallstones.
A Record Broken by Thousands
The previous world record for gallstones removed from a single patient was set in Britain in 1983, when doctors extracted 3,110 stones from a German patient. Dr. Saha noted that just two months before Mondal’s surgery, he had operated on another patient with 1,110 stones — a figure that had itself seemed extraordinary at the time.
Mondal’s case exceeded the previous record by nearly four times.
Dr. Saha has formally written to the Royal College of Pathologists in London, requesting that the specimen be preserved in their museum collection.
What the Doctor Said
Speaking after the surgery, Dr. Saha described the moment he realized the full scale of what he had removed. He said he had expected a large number of stones going in — based on Mondal’s symptoms and imaging — but had never imagined a count anywhere close to what his team eventually tallied.
He added that the stones ranged in size from 2mm to 5mm, which placed them firmly in the smaller category of gallstones. In many gallbladder cases involving this size range, stones can accumulate gradually over years without a patient fully understanding why their discomfort keeps returning.
What Are Gallstones?
Gallstones are hardened deposits of digestive fluid — primarily cholesterol or bile salts — that form inside the gallbladder, a small organ beneath the liver that stores bile used in digestion. They range in size from a grain of sand to as large as a golf ball, and patients can carry them for years without symptoms.
When symptoms do appear, they typically include sharp, cramping pain in the upper right abdomen — a condition known as biliary colic — as well as nausea, bloating, and the kind of chronic indigestion Mondal had been experiencing. In severe cases, gallstones can block bile ducts and cause dangerous infections.
Laparoscopic cholecystectomy — the removal of the gallbladder through small incisions using a camera — has become a standard and relatively safe procedure in most parts of the world. Recovery times are generally short, as Mondal’s case demonstrated.
How Is the Patient?
Mondal was discharged from the hospital after a two-day stay and is reported to be recovering well. Her case, while medically remarkable, ultimately had a straightforward outcome: the source of years of pain was identified and removed, and she left the hospital better than she arrived.
Why It Matters
Cases like Mondal’s serve as a reminder that the human body is capable of quietly accumulating problems over long periods of time — particularly when symptoms are chalked up to stress, diet, or ordinary aging. Gallstones are one of the most common digestive conditions worldwide, affecting hundreds of millions of people, yet many go undiagnosed for years.
Doctors routinely advise that persistent abdominal pain, especially when accompanied by indigestion, bloating, or discomfort after fatty meals, should be evaluated rather than endured. In Mondal’s case, the decision to seek medical attention did not just relieve her pain — it produced a discovery that will be studied and discussed in medical circles for years to come.
For her surgeon, the case landed in the record books. For Minati Mondal, it simply meant waking up without pain for the first time in what may have been a very long time.