Gastrointestinal (GI) Oncology Program
Extrahepatic Bile Duct Cancer
Extrahepatic Bile Duct Cancer? | Symptoms | Stages | Treatment Option | About Clinical Trials | Greenebaum Cancer Center
Stages
If a patient has extrahepatic bile duct cancer, the doctor will do more tests to find out if the cancer cells have spread to other parts of the body. This process is called staging, and it helps the a doctor to plan treatement based on the location and extent of the cancer.
The following stages are used to describe extrahepatic bile duct cancer:
Localized: The cancer is located only in the area where it began and can be removed in an operation. The patient will probably have surgery to remove the cancer and might also have external beam therapy.
Unresectable: The cancer cannot be completely removed in an operation. It may have spread to nearby organs and lymph nodes or to other parts of the body. (Lymph nodes are small, bean-shaped structures that are found throughout the body; they produce and store infection-fighting cells.) Treatment may be one of the following:
- Surgery or other procedures to bypass blockage in the bile duct
- Surgery or other procedures to bypass blockage in the bile duct followed by external-beam radiation therapy or internal radiation therapy
- Clinical trials of radiation therapy with drugs to make the cancer cells more sensitive to radiation (radiosensitizers)
- Clinical trials of chemotherapy or biological therapy.
Recurrent: Recurrent cancer is cancer that has come back (recurred) after it has been treated. It may come back in the bile duct or in another part of the body. Treatment depends on many factors, including where the cancer came back and what treatment the patient received before. Clinical trials are testing new treatments.
This page was last updated on: March 3, 2008.
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