Extended resection for intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma in Japan

To elucidate surgical outcome after extended surgery for intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC), we retrospectively allocated 83 patients who had undergone resection to a standard surgery group (n = 56), in which the patients had undergone hepatectomy alone or hepatectomy with bile duct resection, and an extended surgery group (n = 27), in which the patients had undergone the standard operation combined with vessel resection and/or pancreatectomy. The incidence of mass-forming plus periductal-infiltrating type lesions (P = 0. 0129), lymph node metastasis (P = 0.0005), noncurative resection (P < 0.0001), mortality within 30 days and within 1 year after surgery (P = 0.0392, P = 0.0010), local recurrence (P = 0.0439), and peritoneal disseminated recurrence (P = 0.0241) was significantly higher in the extended surgery group than in the standard surgery group. The 5-year survival rate was significantly higher in the standard surgery group (30%) than in the extended surgery group (10%; P = 0.0061). The mortality rate within 1 year after extended surgery was significantly higher in the patients with infiltrating-spread type tumors than in the patients with non-infiltrating spread type tumors (P = 0.0032), and long-term (5-year) survival in the extended surgery group was significantly lower in the patients with infiltrating-spread type tumors than in the patients with non-infiltrating spread type tumors (P = 0.0253). We conclude that extended surgery does not improve the curative resection rate or the surgical outcome of ICC, and that extended surgery is not indicated for patients with infiltrating-spread type tumors.