# Biliary tract cancer: ESMO Clinical Practice Guideline for diagnosis, treatment and follow-up

Source: https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-esmo-biliary-tract-cancer-guideline-ann-oncol-2023/  
OnCo record `paper-esmo-biliary-tract-cancer-guideline-ann-oncol-2023` (Key paper). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

The European oncology society's 2023 guideline for bile duct and gallbladder cancer, covering how the diseases are diagnosed, staged, operated on, treated with drugs and followed up.

## Summary

ESMO Clinical Practice Guideline for biliary tract cancer, published in Annals of Oncology in 2023 by Vogel, Bridgewater, Edeline and colleagues for the ESMO Guidelines Committee. Europe PMC indexes no abstract for this article, so OnCo carries no figures from it; the guideline itself is open on the ESMO website and covers diagnosis, molecular testing, resection and adjuvant capecitabine, first-line gemcitabine-cisplatin with durvalumab, and later-line targeted options.

## Fields

- Kind: Key paper
- Last checked: 2026-09-24
- Tags: gallbladder-evidence
- Journal: Annals of Oncology
- Year: 2023
- DOI: 10.1016/j.annonc.2022.10.506
- Authors: Vogel A, Bridgewater J, Edeline J, et al.
- Findings: No abstract is indexed on Europe PMC; recommendations are read from the guideline itself.
- What it means: This is the reference European standard against which UK and NHS practice for gallbladder cancer is compared; it treats gallbladder cancer within biliary tract cancer rather than as its own disease.
- Caveats: Gallbladder cancer recommendations are largely extrapolated from mixed biliary trials.; Published before the zanidatamab approvals of 2024 and 2025.

## Sources

- Ann Oncol 2023: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annonc.2022.10.506
- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36372281/
- ESMO guidelines: gastrointestinal cancers: https://www.esmo.org/guidelines/esmo-clinical-practice-guidelines-gastrointestinal-cancers

## Connected records

- collections: [ESMO Clinical Practice Guidelines & MCBS](https://onco.cc/collections/esmo-guidelines/)
- cancers: [Biliary tract cancer (all types)](https://onco.cc/cancers/biliary-tract-cancer/), [Biliary tract cancer (cholangiocarcinoma)](https://onco.cc/cancers/cholangiocarcinoma/), [Gallbladder cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/gallbladder/)
- institutions: [European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)](https://onco.cc/institutions/esmo/)
- people: [John N. Primrose](https://onco.cc/people/john-primrose/), [Juan W. Valle](https://onco.cc/people/juan-valle/)
- journals: [Annals of Oncology](https://onco.cc/journals/annals-of-oncology/)
- key papers: [British Society of Gastroenterology guidelines for the diagnosis and management of cholangiocarcinoma](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-bsg-cholangiocarcinoma-guideline-gut-2023/)
- roadmaps: [Gallbladder cancer roadmap: from a chance finding at gallstone surgery to a disease with its own trials](https://onco.cc/roadmaps/gallbladder-cancer-roadmap/)

---
JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/paper-esmo-biliary-tract-cancer-guideline-ann-oncol-2023.json