Survival Rate of Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma Patientsafter Surgical Treatment in Thailand

Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC), one of the primary liver cancers, is frequent in the northeasternpart of Thailand. Surgical resection remains the best method of treatment, but patients suffering from ICCusually present at a late stage of the disease. Studies of survival and prognostic factors after surgery remain rare.The aim here was to evaluate the survival rate and factors affecting the survival of patients with intrahepaticcholangiocarcinoma after surgery. The study used a retrospective cohort design. The subjects were 73 consecutivepatients with ICC, who were admitted for surgery to Srinagarind Hospital, Khon Kaen University, during theperiod 2005-2009. The censoring date was 31 December, 2011, data being evaluated using uni- and multivariateanalyses. Postoperative survival analysis was performed by the Kaplan-Meier method, and the Cox proportionalhazard model was used to identify independent prognostic factors. The total follow-up time was 99 person-years.The total number of deaths was 59, giving a mortality rate of 59 per 100 person-years. The cumulative 1-, 3-,and 5-year survival rates were 52.1%, 21.7%, and 11.2%, respectively. The median duration of survival afterresection was 12.4 months. Univariate analysis revealed stage of disease, lymph node metastasis, histologicaltype, histological grade and macroscopic classification to be statistically significant (p-value<0.05) prognosticfactors. In the multivariate analysis, only macroscopic classification was statistically significant (p-value<0.05).In conclusion, macroscopic classification was the only independent factor found to be significantly associatedwith survival following surgical treatment of ICC.