Gallbladder cancer (patient information)
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What is gallbladder cancer
Gallbladder cancer is rare. It is more common in women and Native Americans. The gallbladder is a pear-shaped organ to store bile which is a fluid made by the liver to digest fat. When your stomach and intestines digest food, your gallbladder releases bile through a tube called the common bile duct. Symptoms of gallbladder cancer include jaundice, abdomial pain and lumps, nausea, vomiting, etc. It is hard to detect gallbladder cancer early. Possible treatments include surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.
How do I know if I have gallbladder cancer and what are the symptoms of gallbladder cancer?
Because the gallbladder is deep inside the body, the doctor cannot see or feel tumors during a routine physical exam. It is hard to find gallbladder cancer early. Sometimes, gallbladder cancers are found unexpectedly after removal of the gallbladder for other reasons, such as gallstones. When the cancer grows larger, people may notice one or more symptoms as the following:
- Jaundice: It is a yellowing of the sclera and skin. Normally, bilirubin is made in the liver and the liver excretes it into bile. Then bile goes into the intestines and eventually leaving the body in the stool. Once the common bile duct becomes blocked, bile can't reach the intestines, and the level of bilirubin builds up. If the bile duct is blocked, bilirubin cannot get through to the intestines then stools may become lighter in color.
- Abdominal pain: These symptoms are because advanced gallbladder cancer start to compress on other nearby organs. The pain may be constant or it may come and go.
- Gallbladder enlargement or lumps in abdomen: This is because the cancer blocks the bile duct and bile builds up in the gallbladder to enlarge. Sometimes a doctor can feel this enlargement during the physical exam
- Digestive problems: Patients with gallbladder cancer are unable to digest fatty foods when cancer blocks the release of the bile into the intestine. This can cause nausea and vomiting that tend to be worse after eating. Undigested fat may cause stools pale, bulky, and greasy.
- Weight loss and marasmus, poor appetite: Unintended or unexpected weight loss is very common in patients with gallbladder cancer. These people also complain of being very tired and having little or no appetite.
Other health problems such as gallstones, hepatitis, and other pancreatic diseases may also cause these symptoms. Only a doctor can tell for sure. A person with any of these symptoms should tell his/her doctor so that problems can be diagnosed and treated as early as possible.
Who is at risk for gallbladder cancer?
There are some factors may increase the chance of acquiring gallbladder cancer. These risk factors are outlined in the table below:
- Gallstones: This is the most common risk factor for gallbladder cancer. It is estimated that about 75% and 90% of people with gallbladder cancer have a history of gallstones. Gallstones are the most common digestive disease in the United States, but only a small proportion of people develop gallbladder cancer.
- Gallbladder polyps: Gallbladder polyp is caused by small gallstones or cholecystitis. Because gallbladder polyps larger than 10 millimeters are likely to develope cancer, surgeons often recommend to remove the gallbladder.
- Family history. People with family history of gallbladder cancer have higher possibility to develope gallbladder cancer.
- Ethnicity: Epidemiology data demonsrate Mexican Americans and Native Americans, particularly in the southwestern United States, are more likely to develop gallbladder cancer than the general population.
- Age: Clinical data show most people with gallbladder cancer are older than 70.
- Gender: Epidemiology data show women are about twice as likely to develop gallbladder cancer as men.
- Smoking: Smoking may increase the risk of gallbladder cancer.
How to know you have gallbladder cancer?
It is hard to detect early for gallbladder cancer. Like other cancer diseases, doctors need to use many tests to diagnose cancer and determine whether it has metastasized. For most types of cancer, a biopsy is the best way to make a definitive diagnosis of cancer. If a biopsy is not possible, other image tests are recommended such as computed tomography (CT) scan, Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or Positron emission tomography (PET) scan.
- Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) and biopsy: During this procedure, a thin, lighted and flexible tube is passed down your throat, through the esophagus and stomach, then into the first part of the small intestine. A small amount of contrast material is then injected through the tube into the common bile duct and x-rays are taken. The x-ray images can show narrowing or blockage of these ducts that might be due to gallbladder cancer. At the same time the doctor doing this test can also put a small brush through the tube to remove cells for a biopsy.
- Computed tomography (CT) scan and biopsy: CT scans are often used to diagnose gallbladder cancer. It can confirm the location of the cancer and show the organs near the gallbladder, as well as lymph nodes and distant organs where the cancer might have spread. These are helpful in staging the cancer and in determining whether surgery is a good treatment option. And CT scans can also be used to guide biopsy and a biopsy sample is then removed and looked at under a microscope.
- Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): An MRI uses magnetic fields but which is a different imaging type from computed tomography (CT) to produce detailed images of the body. Like computed tomography (CT), a contrast agent may be injected into a patient’s vein to create a better picture. MRI scan takes longer time than CT scan.
- Positron emission tomography (PET) scan: When doing this test, a small amount of a radioactive medium is injected into your body and absorbed by the organs or tissues. This radioactive substance gives off energy to accept to produce the images. PET can provide more helpful information than CT scan and MRI scan. It is useful to see if the cancer has spread to lymph nodes and also useful for your doctor to locate where the cancer has spread.
- Ultrasound: This is an atraumatic test which uses sound waves to create a picture of the internal organs. Because tumors generate different echoes of the sound waves than normal tissue, the doctor can locate a mass inside the body.
- Blood tests: Blood tests that look at levels of different kinds of bilirubin are also useful to decide whether a patient's jaundice is due to a disease of the liver or to blockage of bile flow.
When to seek urgent medical care
Gallbladder cancer is a tumor that cannot be found early. If symptoms of gallbladder cancer develop, go to see your doctor as soon as possible:
- Severe pain in abdominal, especially accopanying with jaundice and fever
Treatment options
Patients with gallbladder cancer have many treatment options. The selection depends on the stage of the tumor. The options are surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, or a combination of methods and palliative treatment.
Surgery: Surgeon will select a kind of surgery for you depending on your cancer stage and overall health. Surgical ways include the following:
- Cholecystectomy
- Radical gallbladder resection
- Palliative surgery
Radiation therapy: This is a cancer treatme nt to kill cancer cells or keep them from growing by using high-energy x-rays or other types of radiation.
Chemotherapy: The treatment is to use drugs to stop the growth of cancer cells either by killing the cells or by stopping them from dividing.
Before treatment starts, ask your health care team about possible side effects and how treatment may change your normal activities. Because cancer treatments often damage healthy cells and tissues, side effects are common. Side effects may not be the same for each person, and they may change from one treatment session to the next.
Diseases with similar symptoms
Other health problems may also cause similar symptoms. Go to see your doctor to verify your diseases as early as possible. Diseases with similar symptoms are listed in the following:
- Hepatitis and liver diseases
Where to find medical care for gallbladder cancer
Prevention of gallbladder cancer
What to expect (Outook/Prognosis)
The prognosis is not good for most gallbladder cancer patients if the cancer is detected late.
Copyleft Sources
http://www.cancer.net/patient/Cancer+Types/Gallbladder+Cancer