Resective surgery versus palliative care in advanced gallbladder cancer

Despite multiple advances in medicine, gallbladder cancer remains a disease with poor prognosis. In advanced stages, the main options are surgical management or palliative non-surgical care. However, it is not clear which therapy constitutes a better alternative.

We searched in Epistemonikos, the largest database of systematic reviews in health, which is maintained by screening multiple information sources, including MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane, among others. We extracted data from the systematic reviews, reanalyzed data of primary studies, conducted a meta-analysis and generated a summary of findings table using the GRADE approach.

We identified one systematic review including three primary studies, none of them randomized. We concluded that resective surgery may increase survival rates in patients with advanced gallbladder cancer, but the certainty of the evidence is low.