Background: The role of resectional surgery in patients with advanced stages of gallbladder carcinoma has not been fully defined. It is generally believed that the survival depends on the stage of the disease, rather than on the treatment option.
Methods: Seventeen selected risk factors were analyzed using univariate and multivariate analyses to predict survival in 87 patients with gallbladder carcinoma who had undergone some form of surgical treatment. Similarly, a subset of 55 patients with American Joint Committee on Cancer Stage IV disease also was analyzed separately.
Results: Palpable mass, tumor (T) status, local infiltration, lymph node involvement, distant metastasis, TNM stage, and the type of surgical treatment (laparotomy alone, bypass, or resection) were significant risk factors by univariate analysis. In addition to palpable mass and the type of surgical treatment, age was also a significant predictor of survival by multivariate analysis. Multivariate analysis of patients with Stage IV disease revealed the same three factors to be significant. In this subset of patients, the median survival after resectional surgery was 16.3 months; after biliary and/or gastric bypass, 4.8 months; and after laparotomy alone, 1.6 months.
Conclusions: The type of surgical treatment significantly influenced survival. Resectional surgery was associated with better survival compared with biliary and/or gastric bypass or laparotomy alone for patients with all stages of the disease, including those with advanced carcinoma of the gallbladder.