Biliary tract cancer: our experience with gemcitabine treatment

Biliary tract cancers are uncommon tumors, with a poor prognosis because mo st patients present an invasive cancer at diagnosis that makes them inopera ble. Chemotherapy is a palliative treatment, but single drugs or combinatio n schedules have demonstrated a response rate of 14-18%, with a duration of response of 8.5 months. We report a single center experience with gemcitab ine in the treatment of patients with advanced biliary tract cancers. We re port on four cases of chemonaive patients with advanced biliary tract cance rs treated with gemcitabine 1 g/m q days 1, 8 and 15. After three cycles of treatment we observed one partial response and three stable disease (accor ding to WHO criteria), with an increase in performance status and a complet e relief of pain in all patients. The median time to progression observed w as 10.7 months. Although this experience is limited to a small number of pa tients, it shows that gemcitabine appears to be worthy of clinical research in this neoplastic pathology and makes the drug a particularly interesting agent for investigation in patients with biliary tract malignancies. [(C) 2000 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins].