The Amalfi Coast, south of Naples, is still a magnet for wealthy Russians and romantic Americans. Yet Naples itself is a tourist wasteland, and the rest of southern Italy is largely vacationer-free. Only 13 percent of tourists who come to Italy go to the Mezzogiorno, as the south is known.
Depending on where a stone blocks the flow of bile, symptoms can include nausea, vomiting, fever, and severe abdominal pain that lasts longer than 6 hours. If you have these symptoms, you may need surgery to remove your gallbladder or the gallstone causing the blockage.
Gallstones that do not cause symptoms rarely lead to problems. Death, even from gallstones with symptoms, is very rare. Serious complications are also rare. If they do occur, complications usually develop from stones in the bile duct, or after surgery. Gallstones, however, can cause obstruction at any point along the ducts that carry bile. In such cases, symptoms can develop. In most cases of obstruction, the stones block the cystic duct, which leads from the gallbladder to the common bile duct. This can cause pain (biliary colic), infection and inflammation (acute cholecystitis), or both.