Surgical treatment for carcinoma of the gallbladder

Carcinoma of the gallbladder has always been associated with dismal prognosis. In this study we present single institution experience in surgical treatment for gallbladder cancer obtained during last five years. Even with recent improvement in diagnostic imaging modalities gallbladder malignancies are still diagnosed too late. The choice of operative procedure for a treatment of gallbladder carcinoma still remained the open question. Carcinoma of the gallbladder is not very common disease in Europe, but some how more common in Poland. According to the National Register, based on a study from 1991, 1863 cases of death from the gallbladder carcinomas were registered [13]. At the same time 2015 new cancer cases were diagnosed and registered. These gave us a crude rate of new cases in 1991 as follows: 2.7/100,000 man and 7.7/100,000 female. Those were even higher for some voivodeships in 1988, for example: Lódź (M = 3.95/100,000, F = 10.58/100,000) and Warsaw (M = 3.15/100,000, F = 7.59/100,000). Carcinoma of the gallbladder has always been associated with dismal prognosis. This was essentially the result of the slow and asymptomatic growth of the neoplasm that infiltrates the surrounding structures, such as the portal vein, hepatic artery and liver parenchyma, making a curative surgical treatment almost impossible. So there is a general impression that no progress has been made during last 20 years in the treatment for carcinoma of the gallbladder [2, 7, 9, 12]. However, in last years, we have observed improvements in diagnostic, surgical and intensive care techniques that allowed to offer a wider range of surgical and non-surgical options to our patients [1, 3, 4, 6, 8].(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)