Gall Bladder Metastasis from Breast Cancer Masquerading Symptomatic Cholelithiasis

Case Report: Metastatic breast cancer to the gallbladder

Cholecystitis is one of the leading causes of emergency surgical interventions; the occurrence of metastases to the gallbladder is rare and has only been reported in the literature exceptionally. Metastatic breast cancer to the gallbladder is even less frequent; in fact, breast cancer usually metastasizes to bone, lung, lymph nodes, liver and brain. We report the case of an 83-year-old female patient with a previous history of breast surgery with axillary dissection in 1997, followed by adjuvant chemotherapy due to invasive ductal carcinoma of the left breast. The patient was admitted at the emergency department for sepsis and an episode of acute kidney failure, anuria and fever. Right-upper quadrant abdominal pain triggered by food intake and abdominal tenderness was also present, placing the diagnostic suspicion of biliary sepsis due to acute cholecystitis. The histological examination of the surgical specimen highlighted the presence of metastasis from an infiltrating ductal breast carcinoma with positive hormone receptors. We also report here the results of a review of the literature looking at articles describing cases of gallbladder metastasis from breast cancer.

Elective cholecystectomy as a rare presentation of metastatic breast cancer

Cholecystectomy leads, occasionally, to the diagnosis of subclinical primary carcinomas and rarely metastatic tumors. The authors report the diagnosis of gallbladder metastasis after an elective cholecystectomy for symptomatic cholelithiasis. Histological examination disclosed a metastasis from a lobular breast carcinoma. Authors found no more than 25 case reports of breast cancer metastasis in English literature. Of those, only one reports first diagnosis after elective cholecystectomy with no radiological or macroscopic signs of malignancy. Rare clinical presentations, as in this case, should always be kept in mind specially in high volume centers. These rare presentations lack good quality evidence and challenge the best standard treatment regimen available. Multidisciplinary assessment is the key to maximize the risk/benefit of different treatment modalities. In this case report, although curative surgery was attempted, progression disease was typical of an advance staged disease.