Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Aug 14, 2016; 22(30): 6960-6964
Published online Aug 14, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i30.6960
Neuroendocrine carcinoma of the extrahepatic bile duct: A case report
Yukio Oshiro, Ryozo Gen, Shinji Hashimoto, Tatsuya Oda, Taiki Sato, Nobuhiro Ohkohchi
Yukio Oshiro, Ryozo Gen, Shinji Hashimoto, Tatsuya Oda, Nobuhiro Ohkohchi, Department of Gastrointestinal and Hepato-Biliary-Pancreatic Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba 305-8575, Japan
Taiki Sato, Department of Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba 305-8575, Japan
Author contributions: All authors contributed substantially to the acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of the data and participated in writing the paper; Ohkohchi N gave final approval of the version to be published.
Supported by Department of Gastrointestinal and Hepato-Biliary-Pancreatic Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tsukuba, Japan.
Institutional review board statement: The University of Tsukuba Hospital Institutional Review Board does not require approval for case reports.
Informed consent statement: The patient involved in this case report authorized the disclosure of his protected health information for academic purposes.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors indicate that they have no financial interests or potential conflicts of interest to declare.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Yukio Oshiro, MD, PhD, Department of Gastrointestinal and Hepato-Biliary-Pancreatic Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tsukuba, 1-1-1 Tennodai, Tsukuba 305-8575, Japan. oshiro@md.tsukuba.ac.jp
Telephone: +81-29-8533221 Fax: +81-29-8533222
Received: March 28, 2016
Peer-review started: March 31, 2016
First decision: May 12, 2016
Revised: May 24, 2016
Accepted: June 13, 2016
Article in press: June 13, 2016
Published online: August 14, 2016
Processing time: 129 Days and 7.5 Hours
Abstract

Neuroendocrine carcinoma (NEC) originating from the gastrointestinal hepatobiliary-pancreas is a rare, invasive, and progressive disease, for which the prognosis is extremely poor. The patient was a 72-year-old man referred with complaints of jaundice. He was diagnosed with middle extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (cT4N1M0, cStage IV). He underwent a right hepatectomy combined with extrahepatic bile duct and portal vein resection after percutaneous transhepatic portal vein embolization. Microscopic examination showed a large-cell neuroendocrine carcinoma according to the WHO criteria for the clinicopathologic classification of gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors. Currently, the patient is receiving combination chemotherapy with cisplatin and etoposide for postoperative multiple liver metastases. Although NEC is difficult to diagnose preoperatively, it should be considered an uncommon alternative diagnosis.

Keywords: Neuroendocrine carcinoma, Extrahepatic bile duct, Neuroendocrine tumor

Core tip: We encountered a resected case of a neuroendocrine carcinoma originating from the extrahepatic bile duct. Although neuroendocrine carcinoma is rare and difficult to diagnose preoperatively, it should be considered an uncommon alternative diagnosis.