Updated clinical practice guidelines for the management of biliary tract cancers: revision concepts and major revised points

Background In 2008, the Japanese Society of Hepato-Biliary-Pancreatic Surgery (JSHBPS) launched the clinical practice guideline for the management of biliary tract cancers. JSHBPS decided to revise these guidelines for distribution of updated points concerning the treatment of biliary tract cancers. Methods To make clearer recommendations, we introduced the concepts of Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) approach, in which the strength of recommendations are decided considering not only quality of evidence, but also balance of benefits and harms/burdens, patients' preferences, and cost benefits. Results We emphasize the importance of the dynamic contrast enhanced multiple row detector CT (MDCT) in the diagnosis of biliary tract and gallbladder carcinomas. For biliary drainage, we suggest to perform endoscopic approaches instead of percutaneous approach to avoid complications. Regarding the surgical treatments, we included new clinical questions about the importance of combined vascular resection, intraoperative histological examination of the bile duct resection margin, and the combined extrahepatic bile duct resection for the gallbladder carcinoma. We also discussed details about premalignant lesions and non-neoplastic lesions in pathology section. Conclusion With this major revision, we expect that the Japanese standards of treatments of these diseases are recorded and reported in the universal language.