The 55-year-old’s rapid demise reflects the poor prognosis for patients with this relatively rare form of cancer. The malignancy is usually aggressive, spreads quickly to other parts of the body, and lacks treatment options, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France.
Tumors that originate in the bile ducts -- tubes that drain bile from the liver into the small intestine -- are difficult to treat. The odds of survival depend on their location and how advanced they are when they are found, said Thomas J. Hugh, head of upper gastrointestinal surgery at Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital.
“The only thing that will give you a chance of being cured is to remove it with a clear margin,” Hugh said in a telephone interview Monday. “Any chemotherapy we give may slow it down, but it won’t cure it. Resection is the best hope.”
Patients whose tumor is caught early and in bile ducts within the liver have a 15 percent chance of surviving the disease for at least five years, according to the American Society of Clinical Oncology. If the cancer has spread to the regional lymph nodes, the survival rate is 6 percent and drops to 2 percent if the cancer has spread to a distant part of the body.