Itchy skin after gallbladder removal

Has your itching resolved?

Debbie - If you're recently post-op give it more time to heal. I believe it's your liver protesting after having a part of its anatomy removed, the gallbladder is attached to the liver directly beneath it in a sheath. I think when the surgeon severs it, inflammation sets in to surrounding anatomy. Did you have any itching pre-op? How has your recovery been?

how is your itching, has it stopped?

Hi Kelly,

In case your interested, my itching began a few days after my surgery and then resolved a few months later. I had a second round of itching begin about 8 months after surgery only to have this resolve after about 6 weeks of itching. And now I am a week into my third period of itching which began last week. I had my surgery on 5 December 2019. My itching was a general, primary itch (happened all over with no rash, hive, etc). That said, the palms of my hands, soles of my feet and face were itch 'hotspots' followed by my thighs and forearms. It seemed to peak at night and was definitely exacerbated by heat. In fact, cold air provided a temporary cure. An aside, but when the itch first hit me in January 2020, I ran out to my car on a -30ish C evening to get my phone and when i got back inside i noticed that the itch was gone completely. After that I setup a TV and a futon in a room at the back of the house with a patio door which opens onto my deck and i would jump out in the cold winter night air and wait until i could no longer stand it and then come back in. This would sometimes give me close to an hour of complete relief; needless to say it was the first time that I truly appreciated my Canadian winter weather. But I digress...

Anyway, you have to get back into your doctor's office and have them help you try and chase this down. don't let them tell you it's in your head or that the itch is the result of pain meds or any of that other garbage. make sure that you point out to your physician that the itch cannot be seen in your blood chemistry specifically by looking at bilirubin. you should probably begin with an ultrasound just to make sure that all the pipes are in the right place and after that and MRCP or ERCP would be in order in order to check your biliary function. I wish you good luck and let us know how it all goes.

OMG! thank you for responding. i am so miserable. So Besides the itching is everything else ok like liver and bile duct function? Or are these things what causes itching? I'm hoping its just an itch for me and nothing real serious. I am so SCARED!

Hi,

So tell me a bit more about your situation. I assume that you're itch started after gallbladder surgery? what sort of it is it is it all over your body anything like that would be helpful. this sort of itch could have a number of different causes but essentially they all go back to the same root issue which is fundamentally an impairment of your biliary flow, and because this system involves the liver, the gallbladder, and the entire biliary tree, a problem anywhere along the system could contribute or be responsible. This type of itch is known as cholestatic pruritus. And unfortunately there's still not a whole heck of a lot understood about how exactly this is caused or exactly what is mediating it, chemically speaking that is. for a long time doctors were mistakenly taught that something called bilirubin was responsible for the itch. They we're taught that when the flow of bile was in some way obstructed that this unconjugated bilirubin would back up into the liver and then find its way into the patient's skin which then resulted in the itching which they were experiencing. This is patently false and bilirubin does not cause this itch nor does it in any way shape or form contribute to the severity of this itch. It was just usually the case that obstructive jaundice was also present alongside the itch and as such a false association was made between the two circumstances. It is now thought that something is being produced in the liver which is either initiating or mediating this type of itching and the reason they're pretty certain about this is because in very late stage cirrhosis and liver failure this itching often will resolve when the patients liver function has pretty much disappeared. It appears that bile salts are probably playing some sort of role in the itching quite possibly as a chemical mediator alongside a number of other factors including the patients endogenous opioid system. As someone who has occasionally partaken in recreational forays in the land of the opioid I can say with absolute certainty that there is some sort of relationship between opioid itch and cholestatic pruritus because the two feel very similar and yet somehow different and I think that difference it's probably the key here to understanding what's going on exactly.

At this point there is no reason for you to be worried about anything as there are so many possible causes here for your itch and given that you have just had gallbladder surgery something in this area is more likely the culprit. but as I said contact your doctor have your blood work checked including obviously a liver panel, and assuming everything looks okay there you're going to probably also want to have an ultrasound to check your biliary tree and to also make sure that you don't have a tiny bile leak or something like that. And beyond that you're going to want to definitely have a look into your bile flow to make sure that everything is functionally okay there. Just work the problem back from the surgery. good luck and keep us posted.

Ray