A Case of Mucin-producing Cholangiocarcinoma

Yukinori Kurokawa, Yasunori Hasuike, Toshimasa Tsujinaka, Yutaka Takeda, Kunimitsu Kawahara^*, Akihiko Kurata^* and Nobuteru Kikkawa

Departments of Surgery and Pathology^*, Osaka National Hospital

We present a 54-year-old woman whose chief complaint was right upper quadrant abdominal pain. ERCP and MRCP revealed both the common bile duct and the left intrahepatic bile duct were dilated and filled with mucin-like material. Angiography showed staining in the left hepatic lobe, especially around the A3 branch. These findings were suggestive of mucin-producing cholangiocarcinoma of the left intrahepatic bile duct, and she underwent a left lobectomy with cystectomy. Although intraoperative cholangioscopic examination disclosed no characteristic mucosal lesions in this case, the operative curability was evaluated histologically by frozen section of the stump after resection of the angiographically stained lesion. Up to now, 31 cases including our case have been reported in the Japanese literature. When the characteristics were summarized, female cases and serum CA19-9 positive cases were 67.7% and 33.3%, respectively. Moreover, 90.3% of the tumors were papillary adenocarcinoma, and 87.1% were located in the left intrahepatic bile duct. When curative resection was performed, the prognosis was good that is 1 of 24 cases was dead at the time of the report, and the longest survival time was 6.4 years.

Key words
mucin-producing cholangiocarcinoma, left intrahepatic bile duct, surgical treatment

Reprint requests
Yukinori Kurokawa Department of Surgery, Osaka National Hospital 2-1-14 Hoenzaka, Chuo-ku, Osaka, 540-0006 JAPAN

Accepted
January 26, 2000

To read the PDF file you will need Abobe Reader installed on your computer.