Screening for the Early Diagnosis of Gallbladder Cancer Using Ultrasonography (Recent Problems on Biliary Tract Cancer)

The usefulness of ultrasonography (US) as a screening examination for the early diagnosis of gallbladder cancer was evaluated. US findings of polypoid lesions of the gallbladder comfirmed histologicaly were classfied into 3 types: peduncular type, papillary type and nodular type. In 28 cases with benign polypoid lesions of the gallbladder, 21 cases showed peduncular type, 5 cases showed papillary type and only 2 cases showed nodular type. In 12 cases with gallbadder cancer locarized in the gallbladder, 8 cases showed nodular type, 2 cases showed papillary type. From these results, a flow chart for screening for gallblader cancer was maked out. Twenty-two patients with gallblladder cancer locarized in the gollbladder who had undergone curative resection were classfied into 3 groups as follows. A group (9)：patients with symptom diagnosed gallbladder cancer befor operations, B group (8)：patients undergone operations for another disease (cholelithiasis etc.) and C goup(9)：patients without symptom who had been screeninged using ultrasonography. Five-year survival rate was 33% in A group, 50% in B group and 89% in C group. A significant difference (p