Biliary papillomatosis

PubMed, the Internet portal of biomedical and life sciences literature, indexed an interesting article, entitled “Malignant potential of intrahepatic biliary papillomatosis: a case report and a review of the literature” (World J Surg Oncol. 2006 Oct 7;4(1):71). Authors are Vassiliou I, Kairi-Vassilatou E, Marinis A et al.. Biliary papillomatosis (BP) is a rare disease entity with a strong malignant potential. It is characterized by multiple papillary adenomas involving both the intrahepatic and extrahepatic biliary tree. A current review of the English literature revealed a high rate of malignant occurrence of approximately 41% and histological analysis along with the expression pattern of mucin core proteins (MUC) and mucin carbohydrate antigens suggests that BP is a borderline or low grade malignant neoplasm with a high malignant potential. The authors report a case of a 68 year-old male patient with the presence of sudden right upper quadrant abdominal pain, nausea and dark urine. The examinations and histological analysis revealed a moderately to poorly differentiated carcinoma of the left hepatic duct in the background of biliary papillomatosis. BP should not be considered to be a benign disease. To access the full abstract of the article, click here.