Adenosquamous/squamous cell carcinoma of the gallbladder

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Adenosquamous/squamous cell carcinoma is a rare histopathologic subtype of gallbladder malignancy. Its clinical features have rarely been described, and its differences from the major histopathologic subtype, adenocarcinoma, remain uncertain. METHODS: All patients with gallbladder carcinoma were retrospectively reviewed. Patients with a histopathologic subtype of either adenosquamous (n = 12) or squamous cell (n = 2) carcinoma were categorized to group I, and patients with adenocarcinoma were categorized to group II. The clinical characteristics and outcomes of these two groups were compared. RESULTS: The two groups were generally no different in clinical features. However, tumor stages of group I patients were significantly advanced (P = 0.048) and included liver involvement (P = 0.008). The outcomes of advanced-stage patients in group II were not different from group I (P = 0.413). Nevertheless, patients in both groups with advanced stage pT who had undergone curative resection showed significantly better survival curves than patients who had undergone non-curative resection (P = 0.003). CONCLUSIONS: Patients with adenosquamous/squamous cell carcinoma of the gallbladder were generally similar to those with adenocarcinoma in clinical characteristics, but had a tendency for liver infiltration. Although the two histopathologic subtypes of the gallbladder carcinoma had similar poor outcomes, better survival could be obtained by performing curative resection for these patients.