Biliary Tract Disease Prognosis
When To Call a Professional
Contact your doctor if you have a yellowing of the skin and eyes. If you have fever or abdominal pain as well, contact a health professional immediately.
Forecast
Infections related to duodenal obstruction by stones have excellent results when treated. More severe infection, ascending cholangitis, has a mortality rate of less than 1% if treated immediately.
If there is a transplant, most patients with primary sclerotic cholangitis live, on average, about a decade after diagnosis. People with primary biliary cirrhosis typically survive between 10 and 17 years after being diagnosed if no symptoms at diagnosis and live around 7 years after symptoms develop. These patients have priority for a transplant. Because there is a high risk of complications of death during a liver transplant, transplants are only recommended when symptoms develop more severe disease. There is also the possibility that the disease developing in the transplanted liver.
The survival rate for people with cholangiocarcinoma is low because most are not diagnosed until the cancer has reached an advanced stage. The survival rate 5 years for biliary tract cancers is generally between 5 and 10% of cases if the cancer has not invaded deeply into the body, surgery can have excellent results and allow long-term survival (for at least 5 years) in the 75 to 80% of cancers detected early.