Complaints of gas, nausea, and abdominal discomfort after meals are common, but they occur just as often in people without gallbladder disease. Such symptoms, in fact, often remain even after treatments for gallbladder disease. When it causes inflammation in the bile duct the condition is known as cholangitis. It causes fever, chills, nausea and vomiting, and severe pain in the upper-right quadrant of the abdomen. Heartbeat may become rapid and the patient may experience a drop in blood pressure.
Most gallstones provoke no symptoms at all.
Asymptomatic gallstones seldom lead to problems. Serious effects from gallstones are usually from stones in the bile duct or surgical complications. Gallbladder cancer is very rare, however, even among people with gallstones. People who have symptomatic gallstones, however, have four times the risk as those without symptoms. Whether gallstones themselves cause the cancer, or whether some factor in bile is responsible for both conditions is unknown.