Gallbladder cancer is a rare but aggressive form of cancer that originates in the gallbladder, a small, pear-shaped organ located beneath the liver. The gallbladder's primary function is to store bile, a digestive fluid produced by the liver that helps digest fats.
Most gallbladder cancers are adenocarcinomas, meaning they develop in the glandular cells lining the gallbladder. Other, less common types include:
Early-stage gallbladder cancer often has no symptoms, but as it progresses, symptoms may include:
A risk factor is anything that increases your chance of getting a disease such as cancer. Different cancers have different risk factors. Some risk factors, like smoking, can be changed. Others, like your age or family history, can’t be changed.
But having a risk factor, or even several risk factors does not mean that you will get the disease. And some people who get the disease may have few or no known risk factors. For ball bladder cancer, risk factors include:
Treatment options for gallbladder cancer depend on several factors such as the stage of the cancer, the likely side effects of the treatment and the patient's overall health. Here are some common treatment options:
Surgery: If the cancer is resectable, meaning the doctor believes it can be removed completely, then potentially curative surgery might be done. If the cancer is unresectable, meaning the cancer is too far advanced, has spread too far or is in too difficult a place to be entirely removed by surgery, then palliative surgery might be done to help relieve or prevent symptoms.
Radiation Therapy: Radiation therapy (also called radiotherapy) is a cancer treatment that uses high doses of radiation to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors. Radiation can kill cancer cells as well as regular cells, so the goal of this therapy is to maximize the radiation dose to the cancer cells and minimize the dose to the healthy cells.
Chemotherapy: Chemotherapy (chemo) is treatment with drugs to destroy cancer cells. Chemo may be given after surgery often along with radiation therapy to lower the risk that the cancer will come back or may be used as the main treatment for some advanced cancers.
Targeted Therapy: Targeted therapy drugs work by targeting specific abnormalities within cancer cells. These drugs sometimes work when standard chemo drugs don’t.
Immunotherapy: Immunotherapy is the use of medicines that help a person’s own immune system find and destroy cancer cells. It can be used to treat some people with gallbladder cancer.
Summa Health has a team of physicians who specialize in gallbladder care, including diagnosis and treatment of gallbladder cancer. To make an appointment, call 330.434.5978.
