Symptoms of advanced primary gallbladder cancer

What are the symptoms of late-stage primary gallbladder cancer? Although gallbladder cancer is rare, once it occurs, it is very harmful. Medically, gallbladder cancer is considered a very dangerous malignant tumor. After the patient is diagnosed, the disease progresses very quickly and the metastasis spreads more seriously. Sometimes, within just a few months, the patient will develop various metastasis symptoms. The following are the typical manifestations of late-stage gallbladder cancer patients.

Several symptoms of advanced primary gallbladder cancer

Right upper quadrant pain

Most cases are persistent pain in the right upper abdomen, which may be aggravated paroxysmically and radiate to the right shoulder and waist and back. This symptom accounts for more than half of cases. Since gallbladder cancer often coexists with gallbladder stones and inflammation, the pain is similar to that of calculous cholecystitis. It starts with discomfort in the right upper abdomen, followed by persistent dull pain or dull pain, sometimes accompanied by paroxysmal severe pain and radiating to the right shoulder.

jaundice

Due to the spread of cancer, some patients develop jaundice. Jaundice is the first symptom in a few patients, while in most cases, jaundice occurs after pain. Jaundice is persistent and progressive, and a few patients have intermittent jaundice. Jaundice often occurs in the late stage of the disease, which accounts for the majority of cases. It is mostly caused by cancer tissue invading the bile duct and causing malignant obstruction. It is also accompanied by weight loss, fatigue, and even cachexia, yellowing of the skin and mucous membranes, and difficult-to-treat skin itching.

Itchy skin

It may appear before or after the onset of jaundice, and may be accompanied by other symptoms such as tachycardia, bleeding tendency, mental depression, fatigue, steatorrhea, abdominal distension, etc. Skin itching is caused by the increase of bilirubin content in the blood, which soothes the peripheral nerves of the skin.

Patients often have low or moderate fever, short-term weight loss, and anemia. When complicated by infection, it manifests as symptoms of acute cholecystitis and/or acute cholangitis. Complications include cholelithiasis and biliary infection, gastrointestinal bleeding and metastasis. Primary gallbladder cancer is prone to early metastasis, often infiltrating the liver and adjacent tissues, and can metastasize along the lymphatic system to the gallbladder lymph nodes and portal lymph nodes. In the late stage, blood-borne spread often occurs.