Cancer of the gall bladder

I see about 5 to 6 advanced gall bladder cancers in my practice every month, almost all of these from the east and north-eastern India. All these patients invariably have stones in the gall bladder. Some of these patients would have had an attempted removal of gall bladder and accidentally found to have gall bladder cancer.

These patients come either with jaundice when the cancer has infiltrated the bile duct making it inoperable or with multipl liver seconadries and also spread to lymph nodes nearby and quite often infiltarting the duodenum or colon or both.

The survival in these patients is very limited and no any tretament is of help. I get a biopsy confirmation of the cancer, stent the bile duct if it is obstructed and involve my meidcal oncologist to suggest chemotherapy if it is of any help.

This dreaded disease is very much an indian disease , very aggressive with a very poor prognosis. Gall bladder stones  is one of the major causative agents of this disease and hence it is not out of place to suggest cholecystectomy for patients with gall stones ( with symptoms or no symptoms 0 in patients coming from this region