The patient, a man in his 70s, had abdominal pain serious enough to send him to a VA Pittsburgh Healthcare hospital. Doctors there found the culprit: a gallstone had inflamed his pancreas.

Dr. Daniel Hall, a surgeon who met with the patient, explained that pancreatitis can be fairly mild, as in this case, or severe enough to cause death. Recovery usually requires five to seven days, some of them in a hospital, during which the stone passes or a doctor uses a flexible scope to remove the blockage.

But “because it can be life-threatening, after patients recover, we usually take out the gall bladder to prevent its happening again,” Dr. Hall said.

A cholecystectomy, as that operation is known, isn’t high-risk surgery. When done with a laparoscope to avoid large incisions, it’s usually an outpatient procedure.