Role of radiation therapy in carcinoma of the gall bladder--a preliminary indian experience.

ABSTRACT

Carcinoma of the gall bladder has a poor prognosis despite surgical resection of the tumour. We prospectively enrolled 21 patients with histologically proven adenocarcinoma of the gall bladder, who were stage III or beyond for post operative radiotherapy. Six month survival was 67% (14 of 21 patients) while one year survival was 33% (7 out of 21 patients) and five year survival was 23% (5 of 21 patients). Those patients who had residual disease or were considered inoperable at surgery had no improvement in survival. The 1 year and 5 year survival in these patients was encouraging with radiotherapy in the present open labelled study of radiotherapy in patients with carcinoma of the gall bladder.