Differentiation between gallbladder cancer and gallbladder polyps

Early gallbladder cancer and gallbladder polyps lack specific symptoms and signs, and there is no obvious difference in clinical manifestations. Most of them are discovered accidentally during physical examinations and B-ultrasound examinations, which brings certain difficulties to clinical diagnosis and differential diagnosis.

Early-stage gallbladder cancer and gallbladder polyps have some similarities: both may have digestive tract symptoms such as loss of appetite, aversion to greasy food, nausea and vomiting, upper abdominal discomfort or dull pain, and the B-ultrasound manifestations are also similar, that is, both are protruding lesions of the gallbladder, and both have thickened or protruding soft tissue lesions of the gallbladder wall. The difference between the two is that patients with gallbladder cancer in the middle and late stages will have jaundice, right upper abdominal mass and cachexia, while patients with gallbladder polyps usually do not have jaundice, right upper abdominal mass, and cachexia; laboratory tests such as liver function tests, tumor markers, DNA flow cytometric analysis, and color ultrasound examinations are helpful for differential diagnosis of the two. Tumor markers in patients with gallbladder cancer will be significantly increased, and color ultrasound can detect abundant blood flow signals in and around the gallbladder cancer lesions, which not only indicates the characteristics of tumor blood vessels, but also indicates the blood supply characteristics of the tumor, which is helpful for differential diagnosis, but this feature is not obvious in the early stage of gallbladder cancer and is not easy to distinguish from gallbladder polyps.

Dynamic observation of the two using B-ultrasound technology shows that gallbladder cancer grows faster and the surrounding mucosa has infiltration changes, while gallbladder polyps grow slowly and have no mucosal infiltration. When gallbladder polyps grow rapidly, the possibility of cancer should be considered and surgical treatment should be performed as soon as possible. Using B-ultrasound-guided probe puncture for cell examination can clearly diagnose gallbladder cancer and gallbladder polyps.