Choose the surgical method according to the different degree of gallbladder cancer

Gallbladder cancer causes great harm to the patient's physical and mental health. The main treatment method is surgery. Choosing the appropriate surgical method according to the degree of tumor invasion is beneficial to improving the patient's survival rate. Generally, surgical methods are divided into three types.

1. Cancer is confined to the gallbladder wall below the serosa layer

Early stage gallbladder cancer has an insidious onset and may be accompanied by symptoms such as gallstones. When patients undergo surgery for gallstones, gallbladder cancer may be unexpectedly discovered in pathological sections, and the lesions are limited to below the serosal layer of the gallbladder wall. For such patients, cholecystectomy is sufficient and there is no need for extended radical surgery. Even if additional surgery is performed to expand the scope of radical surgery, it may not necessarily change the survival rate and prognosis.

2. The lesion has invaded the serosal layer

For patients who have been clearly diagnosed with gallbladder cancer and whose lesions have invaded the serosal layer, whether or not there is local metastasis and who are still likely to undergo surgical resection, extended radical cholecystectomy may be considered. At the same time as cholecystectomy, local liver tissue around the gallbladder bed should be removed, with a resection range of at least 2 cm. Lymph nodes around the portal vein, hepatic artery, and extrahepatic bile duct should be cleared. If the cancer invades the back of the pancreas, a pancreaticoduodenectomy should also be performed. Try not to expand the scope of surgery and retain tissues that do not need to be removed, so as not to affect the patient's postoperative quality of life or increase the surgical mortality rate.

3. Has the gallbladder cancer spread to the bile duct?

If gallbladder cancer has spread to the bile duct and has multiple metastatic sites such as the liver, radical surgery is no longer possible. Such patients can choose palliative surgery to relieve symptoms and improve their quality of life according to their physical condition and illness. Patients affected by cancer may suffer from obstructive jaundice. In this case, bile duct drainage is required to relieve symptoms of jaundice and skin itching; patients with pyloric obstruction need to undergo gastrojejunostomy, etc.