Intraductal Papillary Neoplasm of Bile Duct : Introduction

Comments:
Introduction: Like gallbladder, the extrahepatic biliary tract shows a spectrum of preinvasive, grossly visible, exophytic neoplasms that grow within the bile duct lumen. They include 1) intraductal papillary/tubular/tubulopapillary neoplasms of the bile duct; and 2) intraductal mucinous cystic neoplasms with ovarian-type stroma. Any part of the biliary tree can be involved. They show dysplasia ranging from low-grade to high-grade/carcinoma-in-situ and are precursors of invasive cholangiocarcinoma.

The image shows an intraductal papillary neoplasm within the lumen of the bile duct on peroral cholangioscopy. Image source: Ohtsuka M. et al. Intraductal Papillary Neoplasms of the Bile Duct. International Journal of Hepatology Volume 2014, Article ID 459091, 10 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/459091; image cropped from the original and used under Creative Commons Attribution License.