Abstract
We describe the case of a 65-year-old woman with minute implantation metastasis at the percutaneous transhepatic gallbladder drainage tract done for occult early gallbladder carcinoma. The patient was diagnosed as having acute cholecystitis with lithiasis and had a laparoscopic cholecystectomy 4 days after PTGBD. Histological examinations revealed adenocarcinoma within the mucosa of the resected gallbladder. Subsequently, a liver bed dissection and excision of the abdominal PTGBD tract were performed 40 days after the first operation. Histopathological findings included a minute metastatic lesion (1 mm in diameter) in the muscle layer of the abdominal tract. She is alive and well without recurrence for more than 6 years. It is possible that seeding metastasis along the PTGBD tract occurs when PTGBD is performed in patients with occult gallbladder carcinoma, even though the lesion is an early carcinoma or the PTGBD placement is brief. Thus, the PTGBD tract should be resected as soon as possible if a PTGBD catheter is placed in a patient with occult gallbladder carcinoma.
