Gallbladder Cancer - Signs, Symptoms and Treatment
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Gallbladder cancer refers to a malignant tumor afflicting
the human gallbladder. This is the pear-shaped organ which stores
the substance known as bile. Bile is the greenish liquid that the
liver's cells produce to aid in digesting fats. A tumor forms when
cells in the gallbladder experience abnormal, out-of-control growth.
This tumor is said to be benign if it does not invade nearby tissue or
travel throughout the body. In this case, the tumor is much less
serious than if it's malignant, i.e., it invades nearby tissue and has
the ability of travelling to other parts of the body. This malignant
tumor is what's known as gallbladder cancer. It's most commonly
found in older people, with the median age for the disease being age 62
to 66. More patients are female than male, by a 3 to 1 radio.
Nobody knows the exact cause of gallbladder cancer, however
it has been linked with gallstones, cigarette smoking, high levels of
estrogen, alcohol, and obesity. A staggering number 70 to 90 percent of
gallbladder-cancer victims have gallstones. However, don't make
the mistake of thinking that because you get gallstones, you're going
to get cancer. The vast majority of people with gallstones never
get gallbladder cancer.
It's difficult to detect symptoms of gallbladder cancer.
Some of the symptom tend to be jaundice, weight loss and loss of appetite.
Sometimes there's pain in the abdomen, particularly under the right-side
rib cage. Because there are no good, clear symptoms of the disease,
most people are diagnosed with gallbladder cancer by a surgeon who is
removing the gallbladder, usually for some unrelated reason. In
most cases, the signal to the doctor that gallbladder cancer might be
present is a skin jaundice or jaundice of the whites of the person's eyes,
or perhaps a mass in the present in the upper right abdominal quadrant
or surrounding the navel.
The stages of gallbladder cancer's primary tumor run like this:
In TX stage, the main tumor can't be assessed. In TD, there's no
evidence of the min tumor. In Tis, there is carcinoma present in
situ. In T1, the tumor will invade muscle layer. In T2, it
invades the perimuscular connective tissue. In T3, it begins invading
the serosa or the liver and possibly other adjacent structures / organs.
In T4, it begins invading the hepatic artery or main portal vein or possibly
other adjacent organs.
Treatment of gallbladder tumors typically involves several methods combined
together to help the patient. If the cancer is caught in the early
stages, the doctors often consider surgery alone. Re-excision is
the recommended approach if a gallbladder cancer is discovered during
a cholecystectomy and if the disease is in stage 2 or above. In
stage 1, there is often much controversy as to whether re-excision should
be considered. Complete removal of all tumor through surgery is
the only actually "curative" method of treating the cancer.
It's unfortunate that only around 25 percent of patients who have the
disease are able to be treated with definitive surgery. Also, the
surgery is normally quite extensive, and will involve removing the gallbladder,
lymph nodes in the region, as well as a part of the liver if doctors determine
there is a possibility of invasion. Even in cases where surgery
is possible, the doctor is often not able to make major resection margins
in the tumor's perimeter, which means that malignant cells could exist
close to tissue edges where the doctor cuts. This means that there
is a high chance of recurrence of the tumor. For this reason, if
there is doubt about getting all of the tumor, sometimes radiation therapy
is used in an effort to eradicate all microscopic cancer in the area of
surgery.
Catching cancer early is always important, and this holds true also of
gallbladder cancer. Of those patients who are diagnosed in stage
1, there is a 70 to 85 percent five-year survival rate. For those
caught in stage 2, it drops significantly to 25 percent. In stage
3, it's 12 percent, and in stage 4, only one to two percent.