Abstract
My clinical research career on biliary diseases started by the manometric evaluation of papillary function in patients with gallbladder and common bile duct stones, followed by development of bile juice cytology in liver transplantation, evaluation of hemodynamic change under pneumoperitoneum in laparoscopic cholecystectomy, and establishment of indication criteria of portal embolization. Since 2000, I have done 355 operations for patients with biliary tract cancer. The 5-year overall survival rate and recurrence-free survival rate were 17%, 14% for intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, 31.2%, 30.9% for perihilar bile duct cancer, 50.1%, 41.8% for distal bile duct cancer, 87.7%, 60.2% for papilla of Vater cancer and 53.6%, 47.5% for gallbladder carcinoma, respectively. A multi-institutional study by the Japan Biliary Association on mucin-producing bile duct tumor revealed clinical characteristics of the diseases and their good prognoses. However, the definition of IPNB has not been determined uniformly and should be re-evaluated by the collaboration study of Japan-Korea study groups.
