Abstract
We report a 72-year old man who had the mass in the gallbladder which was detected by the abdominal ultrasonography. We had the diagnosis of the gallbladder cancer which invaded into the liver and of the metastasis in the liver and lymph nodes.
The patient underwent cholecystectomy with en block resection of liver (S4a/S5) and the bile duct.
Pathologically the tumor has sheet-like invasion from the submucosa of gallbladder to the liver. The tumor cells were characterized by endcrine cells with nuclear atypicality, verious size of granular chromatin, and a high N/C ratio. Definite adenocarcinoma was absent. Immunohistochemically, the tumor cells were positive for AE1/AE3 and CD56 and weak positive for chromogranin A. Thus, the final classification of T3 N1 M1 Stage IVb was given to this lesion. The postoperative course was uneventful, but the patient had multiple recurrences in the liver after 6 months and and died for 17 months. We present this case and review of the literature, because primary endocrine carcinoma without an adenocarcinoma component of the gallbladder is very rare and has a poor prognosis.
