Many patients with gallstones and abdominal pain don’t feel better after a procedure to remove their gallbladder, and a recent study suggests this surgery may not always be necessary. Treatment guidelines in many countries recommend that doctors perform a minimally invasive operation known as a laparoscopic cholecystectomy to remove the gallbladder when patients have abdominal pain associated with gallstones. But in non-emergency cases, there’s no consensus on how doctors should choose which patients might be better off with nonsurgical treatments and lifestyle changes. For the study, researchers tested whether patients with gallbladder conditions being treated at outpatient clinics might have better outcomes and less post-operative pain if surgeons adopted a strict set of criteria for operating instead of the “usual care” practice of operating at surgeons’ discretion. Researchers randomly assigned 537 patients with gallstones and abdominal pain to receive usual care, and 530 patients to get surgery only if they …