Types of Cancer: Types of Cancer :: Gallbladder Cancer

How is gallbladder cancer treated?

As with many tumor types, management is often a multidisciplinary approach involving a variety of treatments.

Total surgical removal of all known tumor is the only truly curative treatment. Unfortunately, only about 25% of patients with gallbladder cancer are able to undergo definitive surgery. Furthermore, such a procedure is typically quite extensive, and involves removal of the gallbladder, regional lymph nodes, and a portion of liver if there is concern of invasion. As you might expect, such a surgery carries a high risk of serious operative injury. Even when surgery is possible, the surgeon is usually unable to take very large resection margins around the tumor, meaning that cancer cells may exist at, or very close to, the tissue edges where the surgeon cut. In such cases, external beam radiation therapy can be used in hopes of eradicating any microscopic cancer remaining in the surgical area and surrounding at-risk regions. Median survival in patients with advanced but operable disease treated with surgery alone is cited as roughly 6-7 months. This can sometimes be improved to over 16 months with postoperative radiation therapy.

For patients who are unable to undergo surgery, either because the disease is too advanced or because of other serious medical conditions, HCPs can use radiation therapy with or without concurrent chemotherapy in order to improve symptoms, and in some cases maybe even increase survival.