Two doctors explain gallbladder and bile duct cancers, which cause about 12,000 diagnoses and 4,000 deaths yearly in the U.S. Risk factors include obesity, gallstones, and primary sclerosing cholangitis. Watch for jaundice, upper-right abdominal pain, and nausea that can develop suddenly or over months.
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So, in the world of oncology, gallbladder.
And bile duct cancers are considered to be rare cancers.
But that being said, over 12,000 people in the United States are diagnosed every.
Year with this disease.
And unfortunately, every year, we lose about 4,000 people. So there are a variety of risk.
Factors for gallbladder and bile duct cancer, and many of these are associated with your underlying race, ethnicity, but also several lifestyle decisions.
So some of the more common risk.
Factors are female, gender. We also have obesity, a history of gallstones. Even gallbladder polyps can be associated with these malignancies.
There are certain inflammatory conditions like primary.
Sclerosing cholangitis, which is known to increase your risk for developing these cancers. There's also been a link to one's ethnic heritage.
So we do find higher rates of.
Disease in people of Latin backgrounds and people of Native American backgrounds.
So the symptoms of gallbladder and bile duct cancers can be rather subtle, or they can come on rather quickly. Some of the more common symptoms would.
Be yellowing of the skin or jaundice.
And this usually first manifests itself as.
Yellowing of the eyes.
Other common problems include abdominal pain, particularly.
In the upper right portion of your abdomen.
And sometimes this pain could be referred.
To your back or your right shoulder.
This can often be accompanied by nausea.
Vomiting, pain with eating, and sometimes these.
Symptoms come on rapidly.
Sometimes they could take months to fully manifest themselves.
We do know that several of the risk factors for gallbladder cancer and bile.
Duct cancer include gallstones, gallbladder polyps, and obesity. And so the recommendations that we have in order to help prevent people from developing gallbladder cancer is to focus on lifestyle. And in this particular regard, we want people to focus on maintaining a healthy weight, eating a healthy diet, and at least doing a little bit of exercise every day. And although we don't have a specific recommendation that we can use, we find that doing this type of broad spectrum lifestyle modifications are probably the most successful way that you can proceed to avoid getting gallbladder and bile duct cancers.
