Where Is the Gallbladder Located?

The gallbladder is a hollow pear-shaped organ, and it is located in the gallbladder fossa. The gallbladder fossa is a concavity of the liver. The organ grows to about eight centimeters in length in adults, and it is four centimeters in diameter.

Parts of the Gallbladder

The gallbladder is broken into three main parts: the fundus, the body, and the neck.

The fundus of the gallbladder is the part of the gallbladder that is the farthest from the cystic duct. This part of the gallbladder is covered by peritoneum. Peritoneum is the serous membrane, and it forms the lining of the abdominal cavity.
The body of the gallbladder is distal to the neck of the gallbladder.
The neck of the gallbladder lies nearest to the cystic duct. The neck connects the biliary tree through this cystic duct. The biliary tree then connects to the common hepatic duct, and this is the common bile duct.

Layers of the Gallbladder

The gallbladder also has several different layers. Working from the inside of the gallbladder to the outside of the gallbladder, the first layer is columnar epithelial tissue. In this layer, there are pouches throughout the tissue that are called “Aschoff’s recesses.”

The next layer is connective tissue which lies on top of the epithelial tissue. Over the connective tissue, there is then a layer of smooth muscle. Smooth muscle is involuntary non-striated muscle, which means that you cannot control when the muscle contracts. Instead the muscle contracts when a peptide hormone called cholecystokinin is secreted by the duodenum.

What Does the Gallbladder Do?

So, now that you understand where the gallbladder can be found in the body, and the different parts of the gallbladder, you may be wondering what exactly does it do in the human body?

The gallbladder is a storage site for bile. In an adult human being, the gallbladder can store just over fifty milliliters of bile. The liver actually produces the bile by emulsifying fats from foods that are partially digested.

When this bile moves to the liver, it becomes more concentrated. When the bile is more concentrated, it is able to attack any fats in food using a smaller amount of bile. The gallbladder then secretes the bile when any food that contains fat enters into the digestive tract. The bile is specifically secreted through the common bile duct.

Who Has a Gallbladder?

As a general rule, the majority of vertebrate animals have gallbladders, while invertebrate animals do not. Vertebrate animals are animals that have a backbone, while invertebrates do not. However, certain vertebrates do not have the gallbladder, and some of these animals include the following: horses, cervids, and rats.

Can Your Gallbladder Get Infected?

Your gallbladder can become infected or sick usually if something prevents the flow of bile from gallbladder to the small intestine, and the object that blocks the bile is usually referred to as a gallstone.

Gallstones are crystalline bodies that are formed by the concentration of normal, or abnormal bile elements. This will occur after you eat, although the exact amount of time that a gallstone attack takes to occur differs depending upon what you ate. The symptoms of a gallstone attack can include the following: nausea, vomiting, intense pain in your abdomen, or intense pain under your right arm. Depending upon the size of the gallstone, it can be removed using medicine that dissolves it, or through surgery.

Now you now just about everyting you need to know about the gallbladder, from where it's located, to problems that can occur in the gallbladder!