BACKGROUND: The outcome of surgical treatment of patients with intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) is poor. This study was designed to analyze the relationship between clinicopathologic features and the survival time after operation.
METHODS: The operation was performed in 104 patients with mass-forming type ICC at our hospital between November 1996 and May 2000. Seventy-nine patients (76.0%) were followed up successfully. Sixteen clinicopathological variables including age, sex, history of chronic liver disease, HBsAg, operation, adjuvant therapy, ascites, lymph node metastasis, invasion of adjacent organs, tumor size, necrosis of tumor, envelope, intrahepatic metastasis, International Union Against Cancer (UICC) TNM staging, histology, and cirrhosis were selected for univariate and multivariate analyses to evaluate their influence on the prognosis.
RESULTS: The accumulative 1-, 3-, 5-year survival rates of the 79 patients were 49.4%, 17.3%, 9.6% respectively. Univariate analysis revealed that sex (P=0.0221), HBsAg (P=0.0115), operation (P=0.0042), adjuvant therapy (P=0.0389), ascites (P=0.0001), invasion (P=0.0220), intrahepatic metastasis (P=0.0000) and TNM stage (P=0.0001) were related to survival time. Multivariate analysis revealed that HBsAg, ascites and TNM stage were significantly related to prognosis.
CONCLUSION:  Early diagnosis and treatment and major hepatectomy are essential to improving the results of surgical treatment of ICC patients.