Do gallbladder polyps have to be treated surgically?

  Gallbladder polyp is a morphological name for a lesion that protrudes or bulges into the cavity of the gallbladder, either spherical or hemispherical, with or without a tip, mostly benign, with three main characteristics: high incidence, insidiousness, and carcinogenicity.  Gallbladder polyps can be divided into: ① tumor polyps, such as adenomatous hyperplasia and adenomyoma, which can become cancerous; ② non-tumor polyps, such as cholesterol polyps and inflammatory polyps, which are not cancerous in nature. Since it is difficult to diagnose the nature of gallbladder polyps before surgery, they are generally called “gallbladder polyp-like lesions” or “gallbladder augmentation lesions”.  Most gallbladder polyps are detected by ultrasound during physical examination and are asymptomatic. A small number of patients may have right upper abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, and loss of appetite; rarely, they may cause obstructive jaundice, non-stone cholecystitis, biliary bleeding, and induced pancreatitis. Physical examination may have pressure pain in the upper right abdomen.  So does every patient with gallbladder polyp-like lesions need to take surgical treatment?  The answer is obviously no.  The reason why gallbladder polyps should be surgically removed is from the clinical point of view, taking into account the cancerous nature of gallbladder polyps and other problems. If the benignity and malignancy of the lesions can be judged before surgery, it is of great importance to the patients to operate only on those patients with a higher chance of malignancy. Therefore, we remind our patients that gallbladder polyps should be examined specifically by a doctor and then carefully choose a treatment plan according to the condition. Generally, only those patients with clinical symptoms or those suspected of malignancy or potential malignancy need surgical treatment.  Clinical indications for surgery of gallbladder polyps are: 1, after excluding psychiatric factors, gastroduodenal and other biliary diseases, surgery is appropriate for patients with gallbladder polyps with obvious symptoms and ineffective symptomatic treatment; 2, asymptomatic, adenomatous polyps or basal wide continuous, age over 60 years, single lesion with a diameter of more than 1 cm, combined with gallbladder stones, ultrasound examination found to be enlarged, gallbladder wall irregularity Patients with gallbladder polyps with large lesions, long tissues or gallbladder neck polyps affecting gallbladder emptying, patients with polyps and loss of gallbladder function, patients with significantly higher tumor marker measurements and other gastrointestinal tumors ruled out, patients who firmly require surgery; 3. For patients over 50 years of age with abdominal ultrasound suggesting polyp-like lesions over 8 mm in diameter, surgical removal of the gallbladder is cautiously recommended to reduce the risk of distant polyp malignancy.  Surgical treatment: laparoscopic cholecystectomy is preferred, biliary surgery can also be used selectively, but once preoperative is highly suspected of pre-cancerous lesions, a more aggressive diagnostic and therapeutic approach of abdominal dissection should be taken, or even intraoperative frozen section pathology for rapid diagnosis to determine the necessary scope of substantial resection such as removal of adjacent lymph nodes around the gallbladder, even coupled with partial biliary resection and biliary tract reconstruction.  What should be noted for those patients with gallbladder polyps who do not meet the indications for surgery?  Patients who do not have the above conditions and have good gallbladder function should not be rushed to surgery, and should be re-examined every 3 to 6 months with abdominal ultrasound to understand the progress of gallbladder polyps. At the same time, Chinese medicine can be used to treat the inflammatory polyps, which may be effective in soothing the liver and clearing heat, activating blood circulation and removing blood stasis.