Outcome of patients receiving chemotherapy for advanced biliary tract or gallbladder carcinoma

Patients with cholangiocarcinoma or gallbladder cancer have poor overall prognosis and their management is often complex. Currently, there is no standard chemotherapy for this disease, but several single agents and combinations have shown promising activity, most notably gemcitabine-based combinations.

We conducted a retrospective analysis of all cases of biliary tract cancer treated at two academic centers in Lyon, France: 127 cases were identified, 67 underwent primary surgery, 13 of which were deemed unresectable upon surgery and were treated medically; 60 patients received medical treatment only. Overall, 71 patients received chemotherapy for locally advanced or metastatic disease and are the subject of this report.

The median age was 60.7 years, 47 (66%) patients were male and 55 (77%) patients had metastatic disease. Twenty-seven patients (38%) required biliary drainage before chemotherapy. Twenty-four patients received single-agent gemcitabine, 37 patients received gemcitabine-platinum combination and 10 patients received fluorouracil-based regimens. The response rates, median progression-free survival and overall survival times were 24%, 4.1, 7.5 months, respectively. There was a significant increase in the response rate with gemcitabine-platinum combinations compared with other regimens. Fluororuracil-based regimens provided lower response rates and shorter median progression-free survival and overall survival as compared with gemcitabine-based regimens (both single agents and combinations).

Although retrospective, these data support the use of gemcitabine-containing regimens in patients with advanced biliary tract or gallbladder cancer. The benefit of adding oxaliplatin in this setting remains unclear.