[Present status and possibilities of radiotherapy in the interdisciplinary treatment of malignant tumors of the stomach, pancreas and bile ducts. III. Extrahepatic bile ducts and gallbladder].

The malignant tumors of the gall bladder and the extrahepatic bile ducts belong to those having the most unfavorable prognosis. Similarly to the carcinomas of the pancreas, most of these tumors are in a very advanced stage when they are diagnosed. The survival times have not been improved by radical and ultraradical operation techniques, the operation mortality, however, has increased. In the meantime, the efficacy of radiotherapy has been proved for these tumors, too. So an additional application of radiotherapy seems indicated regarding the fact that most of these patients present postoperative locoregional recurrences. As for the carcinomas of the stomach and the pancreas, the best effect of radiotherapy can be expected in case of an intraoperative irradiation; furthermore direct percutaneous intraductal irradiation techniques have been developed for suitable cases. A possible efficacy of additional chemotherapy cannot be assessed yet; a locally adjuvant effect, as in patients with carcinoma of the pancreas, could be imagined. The authors present the surgical, radiotherapeutic, and chemotherapeutic results achieved hitherto in the treatment of the carcinomas of the extrahepatic bile ducts and the gall bladder and propose further possibilities for the future use of radiotherapy. After the failure of surgery alone an improvement of the bad prognosis of these carcinomas by cooperative therapy conceptions is a vital necessity, the more as the role of obstructive jaundice as fatal factor has been eliminated by the non-surgical percutaneous transhepatic drainage of bile ducts.