The crystallization behavior of gallstones grown from cholesterol

✍ Scribed by S. Kumar; S. J. Burns

• Book ID: 104628923
• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1993
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 616 KB
• Volume: 4
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0957-4530
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00120125

✦ Synopsis

Cholesterol is the major crystalline component of most gallstones found in the western hemisphere. Synthetic gallstones have been grown in our laboratory from cholesterol to study both growth morphology and kinetics. It is established that synthetic stones show characteristics of spherulitic crystallization. It is suggested that natural stones in vivo will also crystallize by spherulitic mechanisms. The microstructure of synthetic and natural stones consists of radiating arrays of cholesterol crystals emerging from a unique nucleation center. Impurities which are used to thicken the melt are segregated between the fibers. The radial growth of these fibers was observed to be a linear function of time. The radial growth rates are reported over a range of temperatures for support of a spherulitic model.