Factores pronósticos en cáncer de vesícula

background. gallbladder cancer is a rare and aggressive neoplasm. objective. the purpose of this manuscript was to evaluate the prognostic factors associated with overall survival in gallbladder cancer patients. methods. we performed a retrospective study of the patients with gallbladder cancer who received attention in a tertiary referral center in mexico city during a 13 year period (1990-2002). we evaluated demographic, clinical, pathological and treatment variables. the main outcome variable was overall survival. the survival curves were constructed with the kaplan and meier method and compared with the log-rank test. multivariate analyses was performed with the cox regression method. we considered significant p < 0.05. results. fifty-one patients were registered, 35 of them women (69%). median patient age was 63 years. fifty-seven percent of patients had previous diagnosis of cholelithiasis. seventy-one percent of patients underwent surgery. ninety-eight percent of the tumors were adenocarcinoma and 25% were poorly differentiated. eighty-six percent were found to have stage iv. median survival for the entire cohort was six months (95% ci 0.5-7), and actuarial survival at one and three years was 22.7% and 3.9% respectively. on univariate analysis surgery, early stage, chemotherapy, karnofsky > 80 and serum albumin > 3.0 g/dl were associated with better prognosis. on multivariate analysis, only surgery (p = 0.0001) and serum albumin > 3 g/dl (p = 0.002) remained significantly associated with better outcome. conclusions. most cases of gallbladder cancer presented with advanced stage. serum albumin is a prognostic factor for survival in this group of patients.