AN EPIDEMIOLOGICAL STUDY TO EVALUATE THE ASSOCIATION OF RISK FACTORS FOR GALLSTONE FORMATION

Abstract

Gallstone disease and its complications are a major public health issue, equally affecting both the developed and the developing countries across the globe. The unmodiable risk factors are universally same. The modiable risk factors however, can vary from place to place depending upon social customs, lifestyle, food habits and preferences. This justies the need for regional studies to look for association of risk factors that can precipitate gallstone disease so that preventive programmes can be undertaken to reduce its incidence. The project was an institution-based observational cross-sectional study on 96 subjects to look for the risk factors associated with gallstone formation. The patients were chosen using simple random sampling technique as per the pre-decided inclusion and exclusion criteria. The data was collected through a pre-designed and pre-tested semi-structured questionnaire. For all the tests for the study, a p-value of < 0.05 was considered signicant. All the statistical signicance of the project was evaluated at a condence interval of 95%. Based on the objective of the study, further descriptive and inferential statistics was drawn. Our study showed a strong association between gallstone disease and the time elapsed between waking up in the morning and taking breakfast, with 88 subjects (91.66%) out of the possible 96 taking their breakfast over 2 hours (120 minutes) after waking up. Thus reduction in overnight fasting by advising people to take their breakfast within 2 hours (120 minutes) of waking up, can bring down the incidence of gallstone disease signicantly. Thus we propose awareness programmes to highlight this issue amongst the population at risk.