Metachronous pancreatic head ductal carcinoma three years after resection of gallbladder cancer.

We report a rare case of female patient with metachronous gallbladder cancer and pancreatic head ductal carcinoma. At the age of 53 years, the patient underwent a cholecystectomy and resection of the liver bed for gallbladder cancer. The post-operation diagnosis was a well-differentiated adenocarcinoma with serosa involvement(T3N0M0, stage IIA). Three years later, an irregular and enhanced 2.4 cm mass in the pancreatic head with obviously pancreatic duct dilated was found by abdominal imaging. We considered it as pancreatic head cancer and performed pancreaticoduodenectomy. The histological diagnosis was a pancreatic ductal carcinoma (T2N0M0, stage I). No recurrence was found after thirty-three months follow up.