[Surgical treatment of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma]

Cholangiocarcinoma is the second most frequent malignant tumor, after hepatocarcinoma, of the liver; it is diagnosed in approximately 10% of the cases. This retrospective study reviewed follow-up in 50 patients with intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma treated from June 1979 through February 1993. Among these 50 patients, 32 underwent liver resection and 18 had a liver transplantation. After resection, the median survival was 13.9 months. Tumor stage was seen to have an effect on the Kaplan-Meier plots although the differences were not significant. Four patients died from tumor recurrence more than five years after curative resection, 4 patients are living today. After transplantation, the median survival was 5 months. Among the 18 patients, 1 recipient who had a stage II tumor is currently living 42 months after transplantation with no evidence of recurrence. Despite the high degree of malignancy of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, a certain number of patients do benefit from liver resection, justifying this aggressive surgical approach. Inversely, transplantation does not appear to be an exceptional therapeutic alternative. In the future, cholangiocarcinomas will require multimodal therapeutics.