Clinicopathological factors predicting long-term overall survival after hepatectomy for peripheral cholangiocarcinoma

Peripheral cholangiocarcinoma (PCC) is clinically challenging because patients typically do not present until the disease is relatively advanced. Three-year to 5-year survival rates even with resection thus remain dismal. This study aimed to determine the clinicopathological factors for predicting overall survival longer than 5 years in PCC patients treated with hepatectomy. From 1977 to 1997, the clinicopatholgical features of 11 PCC patients who underwent hepatectomy with long-term overall survival (group A) were reviewed. Comparison was made with the clinical features and factors influencing the outcome of 70 PCC patients who survived less than 5 years after hepatectomy (group B). Of 81 PCC patients undergoing hepatectomy, 11 (13.6%) were 5-year survivors. The 81 PCC patients comprised 32 men and 49 women, with a mean age of 56.0 years (range: 34-83 years). Univariate analysis showed that female gender, absence of physical findings, a higher percentage of presence of mucobilia, early staged tumor, intraductal papillary tumor growth, and curative hepatic resection were more frequent in group A patients than group B patients. However, multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that absence of physical findings, presence of mucobilia, early staged tumor, and curative hepatic resection were the four independent factors differentiating group A from B patients. The 1-, 3-, 5-, and 10-year survival rates of the group A patients were 100%, 100%, 100%, and 40%, whereas those of the group B patients were 46.0%, 9.5%, 0%, and 0%, respectively. Absence of physical findings, presence of mucobilia, early staged tumor, and curative hepatectomy could independently predict PCC patients with long-term overall survival after hepatectomy.