Current status and prospect of endoscopic photodynamic therapy for unresectable extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma and ampullary carcinoma

Abstract

Unresectable extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma and ampullary carcinoma have high malignant degree and poor prognosis. At present, internal or external biliary drainage is the main palliative treatment, which can improve patients' quality of life，but has no therapeutic effect on the tumor itself. Endoscopic photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a new technology for minimally invasive treatment of biliary tumors in recent years. It can kill tumor cells locally and cause systemic immune response, prolong the survival time of patients, and has a broad clinical application prospect. With the deepening of the research on the molecular mechanism of PDT and the combination with chemotherapy, radiotherapy，immunotherapy and so on, endoscopic PDT has achieved significant efficacy in killing primary tumor, reducing the tumor stage and treating the recurrent tumors. In this paper, we analyze the current status of endoscopic PDT in unresectable extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma and ampullary carcinoma， and look forward to the future direction.

Keywords

• |endoscopy|photodynamic therapy|extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma|ampullary carcinoma