Squamous cell carcinoma of gall bladder: a rare clinical entity: management experience of a tertiary care centre

Background: Squamous cell carcinoma of gall bladder is a rare presentation with limited literature hence adjuvant treatment is still ill defined with under-powered studies showing controversial role of adjuvant treatment. Aims: To analyse prognostic factors affecting outcome, role of adjuvant treatment and outcome. Settings and Design: This was a retrospective analysis conducted from January 2010 to December 2013 in a tertiary care centre of North India. Materials and Methods: It analysed patients of squamous cell carcinoma of gall bladder for clinical presentation, treatment, prognostic factors and outcome. Results: Nine patients of pure squamous cell carcinoma were found. All patients had cholelithiasis and presented in locally advanced stage. Five patients were resectable while four were unresectable. Resectable patients underwent extended radical cholecystectomy followed by adjuvant chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Margin status post surgery was an important prognostic marker on multivariate analysis. Unresectable patients underwent palliative chemotherapy based on their eastern cooperative oncology group performance status. Resectable patients had a median survival of 18 months, while unresectable patients had a median survival of five months. Conclusion: Surgery remains the main stay of treatment and adjuvant treatment has no proven benefit although there was a trend towards better survival in our cohort, especially in patients with positive margins.