Minati Mondal is a woman from Kolkota, India who had suffered from stomach pain and acid reflux in a period of 45 days at the age of 48.

She went to hospital to reveal that she had gallstones. She underwent a surgical intervention when doctors were shocked- they found 12,000 stones in her gallbladder which is probably the new world record. The samples are kept in London.

Minati Mondal suffered from crippling stomach pain and acid reflux in a period of two long months. After she took some tests along with the ultrasounds, it results showed that she was suffering from a severe case of gallstones.

Gallstones are small, hard crystalline mass formed abnormally in the gallbladder or bile ducts from bile pigments, cholesterol, and calcium salts and can cause severe pain and blockage of the bile duct.

In some cases a person can have a normal life without any symptoms until they start to block the gallbladder- that is when they cause pain and nausea and a potentially fatal infection. Fatty diet can raise the risk; especially in women (still not clear why).

Nevertheless, doctors did not expect to find such a large number of stones.

Dr. Makhan Lala Saha who performed the laparoscopic surgery explained: “I was astonished to see the large number of stones that we extracted from the gall bladder of this patient. I had never thought a gall bladder could contain so many stones.”

Dr. Saha counted all the tiny stones with the help of several other assistants, wearing double – layered rubber gloves. It took them 4 hours to finally conclude that there were 12,000 stones with a size between 2 mm and 5 mm.

Dr Makhan Lala Saha is gastrointestinal endometriosis surgeon at the hospital, who said that although he had participated in many surgeries, he was shocked when the number crossed the 5,000 mark.

Dr. Saha said: “Two months ago, I had operated on a girl who had 1,110 stones but despite the shocking number, I found that in 1983, doctors in Britain had removed 3,110 stones from a German patient’s gall bladder. But I feel this number can replace the past record since the current number is three times more than the record