Treatments for bile duct cancer
If you have bile duct cancer, your healthcare team will create a treatment plan just for you. It will be based on your health and specific information about the cancer. When deciding which treatments to offer for bile duct cancer, your healthcare team will consider:
- whether the tumour can be completely removed with surgery (is resectable) or cannot be completely removed (is unresectable)
- the stage of your cancer
- your overall health
In the early stages of bile duct cancer, complete removal of the tumour with surgery is the only treatment that offers a chance for a cure. But usually in an advanced stage, the cancer cannot be fully removed with surgery. Chemotherapy and chemoradiation may be given to slow down the spread of cancer and prolong life. Palliative treatment may also be used to relieve symptoms. Intrahepatic bile duct cancers are treated more like liver cancer.