Study of gallbladder cancer staging systems for surgery treatment choice and prognosis estimation        TANG Zhao-hui，LIU Ying-bin，QUAN Zhi-wei. Department of General Surgery, Xinhua Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200092, China
Corresponding author：QUAN Zhi-wei，E-mail：zhiwquan@yahoo.com.cn
Abstract    Objective    To realize the application of gallbladder cancer staging systems and estimate their value of guiding the surgery treatment choice and prognosis estimation. Methods    Correlative literatures were retrieved with the key words “gallbladder cancer and stage” using CNKI (Chinese) and Pubmed (English) from January 2001 to June 2010, and were tabulated and critically appraised. Results    There were three main kinds of methods for gallbladder cancer staging, Nevin, JSBS and TNM (AJCC/UICC). Among 235 papers retrieved with CNKI, there were 163 (69.4%) papers of Nevin stage, 4 (1.7%) papers of JSBS, 65 (27.6%) papers of TNM and 3 (1.3%) papers of others. Among 353 papers retrieved with Pubmed, there were 71(20.1%) papers of Nevin stage, 14 (4%) papers of JSBS stage, 261 (73.9%) papers of TNM stage and 7 (2%) papers of others. Conclusion    Early application of Nevin stage is popular and easily remembered but the value of guiding the surgery treatment choice and prognosis estimation is poor. JSBS stage and lymph node grouping were complicated for clinical application. TNM stage is particular and easily applied with reasonable lymph node grouping. The value for guiding surgery treatment choice and prognosis estimation is more rational than the others. The application of TNM stage is becoming more and more popular.