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Extrahepatic Bile Duct Cancer? | Symptoms | Stages | Treatment Option | About Clinical Trials | Greenebaum Cancer Center
Get answers to your GI cancer medical oncology questions.
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Patients with extrahepatic bile duct cancer usually are treated with either surgery or radiation therapy. Chemotherapy and biological therapy are being studied in clinical trials.
For more information about each treatment option, select from the following list:
Surgery is a common treatment for extrahepatic bile duct cancer. If the cancer is small and is only in the bile duct, a doctor may remove the whole bile duct and make a new duct by connecting the duct openings in the liver to the intestine. The doctor will also remove lymph nodes and look at them under a microscope to see if they contain cancer.
If the cancer has spread outside the bile duct, a surgeon may remove the bile duct and the tissues around it. If the cancer has spread and cannot be removed, the doctor may do surgery to relieve symptoms. If the cancer is blocking the small intestine and bile builds up in the gallbladder, the doctor may do surgery to go around (bypass) all or part of the small intestine. During this operation, the doctor will cut the gallbladder or bile duct and sew it to the small intestine. This is called a biliary bypass.
Surgery or x-ray procedures may also be done to put in a tube (catheter) to drain bile that has built up in the area. The doctor can make the catheter drain through a tube to the outside of the body, or the catheter may go around the blocked area and drain into the small intestine. If the cancer is blocking the flow of food from the stomach, the stomach may be sewn directly to the small intestine so that the patient can continue to eat normally.
The side effects of surgery depend on the location of the tumor and the type of operation, among other factors. Patients are often uncomfortable during the first few days after surgery, but the pain can usually be controlled with medicine. The recovery period after an operation varies from patient to patient.
The use of high-energy x-rays to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors. Radiation may come from a machine outside the body (external radiation therapy) or from putting materials that produce radiation (radioisotopes) through thin plastic tubes into the area where the cancer cells are found (internal radiation therapy).
The most common side effects of radiation therapy are tiredness, skin reactions (such as a rash or redness) in the treated areas, and loss of appetite. Radiation therapy may also cause a decrease in the number of white blood cells that help protect the body against infection. Most of these side effects can be treated or controlled, and in most cases they are not permanent.
The use of drugs to kill cancer cells. Most anticancer drugs are injected into a vein (IV) or a muscle; some are given by mouth. Chemotherapy is a systemic treatment, meaning that the drugs flow through the bloodstream to nearly every part of the body to kill cancerous cells. It is generally given in cycles: a treatment period is followed by a recovery period, then another treatment period, and so on.
Chemotherapy drugs generally target rapidly dividing cancer cells. There are other cells in the body that also divide rapidly (including blood cells, cells that line the digestive tract, and cells in hair follicles), and these healthy cells may also be affected by chemotherapy drugs. The resulting side effects include infections, tiredness, temporary hair loss,and mouth sores. Not all chemotherapy patients develop all of these symptoms, and they usually go away during the recovery period or after treatment stops. Medicines and other treatments are available to control or minimize many of these symptoms.
One of the most important side effects of many chemotherapy drugs is lowering of the blood counts. Because chemotherapy can reduce the function of the bone marrow, where most blood cells are produced, it can cause anemia (the patient may have less energy), low platelets (the patient may bruise or bleed easily), or a low white blood cell count (the patient may be more susceptible to infections).
Biological therapy uses materials made by the body itself or made synthetically in a laboratory to boost, direct, or restore the body's natural defenses against disease. Biological therapy is sometimes called biological response modifier (BRM) therapy or immunotherapy.
About Side Effects: Side effects occur with cancer treatments because healthy cells are often damaged along with the targeted cancer cells. The type and extent of side effects vary, depending on the particular treatment involved, its duration, and its dose.
During cancer treatment, some patients lose their appetite and find it hard to eat well. In addition, the common side effects of treatment, such as nausea, vomiting, or mouth sores, can make it difficult to eat. Some patients find that the taste of foods is different. Others may not feel like eating when they are uncomfortable or tired.
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