A hepatocellular carcinoma with lymph node metastasis and invasion into the gallbladder: preoperative difficulty...

We present a case of resected hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) which invaded the gallbladder with a metastasis to a lymph node. It was extremely difficult to make a differential diagnosis between HCC and gallbladder cancer preoperatively. A 68-year old man was admitted to hospital with complaint of a fever. Ultrasonography (US) and CT scan showed a mass, growing invasively from the gallbladder bed of the liver (S4) to the lumen of the gallbladder. A selective arteriography showed the mass stained by the cholecystic artery, internal branch of the left hepatic artery, and frontal branch of the right hepatic artery. Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) showed the non-visualized gallbladder, a constriction of the common hepatic duct with suspicion of metastatic lymph nodes in the hepatoduodenal ligament. The tumor markers were: alpha-fet-protein 13175 ng/ml, PIVKA-II 26200 mAU/ml and CA19-9 0.0 U/ml. Both HBs antigen and HCV antibody were negative. We performed cholecystectomy with en-block resection of the anterior and middle inferior segment of the liver, the common bile duct and a part of the transverse colon, with dissection of the lymph nodes. The tumor, 8 cm in diameter, was brown colored without a capsule, growing diffusely in the liver, to the inside of the gallbladder and the transverse colon. Histopathological inspection of the specimen revealed moderately differentiated hepatocellular carcinoma with a metastatic lymph node along the common hepatic artery. TNM classification was IVB phase [T3,N0,M1 (LYM,OTH)]. There are only 3 previous cases of HCC reported with invasion into the gallbladder. At most 2.2% of the resected cases of HCC had metastatic lymph nodes at resection, while it was as high as 20-50% of the autopsy cases. Operation on such an invasive HCC case should consider lymph node metastasis.