Primary Carcinoma of the Gallbladder

The subject of primary carcinoma of the gallbladder may be considered to be of interest more from an academic than a clinical point of view. This statement is made because the disease is such that a preoperative diagnosis sufficiently early for successful surgical measures is practically impossible. Those few cases that have been reported in which cure was obtained are almost without exception those in which the carcinoma was found during an operation for some other condition, particularly gallstones. Even the greater majority of these were not diagnosed macroscopically but in the routine microscopic examination of gallbladders removed because of cholecystitis or cholelithiasis. In the only case among the 19 here reported in which the patient is still living, the carcinoma was not suspected during the operation but was found in the course of routine pathologic examination. The patient is still living and well six and one-half years after cholecystectomy