Abstract
An 81-year-old woman was admitted to our hospital with suspected gallbladder cancer. Abdominal ultrasonography and computed tomography showed an elevated lesion in the gallbladder. She underwent cholecystectomy with full-thickness dissection with regional lymph node dissection (D1). She had no postoperative complications. The resected specimen revealed a 17×12 mm irregular elevated lesion on the mucosal surface of the abdominal side of the resected gallbladder. The pathological diagnosis was signet ring cell carcinoma infiltrating into the subserosa, and no malignant cells were detected in the dissected lymph nodes. She is alive without recurrence, 32 months after the operation. Signet ring cell carcinoma of the gallbladder is rare, and only 18 resected cases have been reported in Japan. Some reports have indicated that signet ring cell carcinoma has poor outcome because of its high biological malignancy. We have re-investigated these patient outcomes in order to evaluate the prognostic impact of signet ring cell carcinoma in gallbladder cancer, which suggests that radical resection may promote long-term survival.
