Abstract
Cholangiocarcinoma, though very rare in Western countries, is one of the commonest liver malignancies in Southeast Asia, especially in Thailand. More than half of the patients present with advanced stage disease. Given the poor treatment outcomes of adjuvant therapeutic options, many patients undergo only biliary drainage for palliative treatment. Clinical characteristics and treatment outcomes after biliary stenting were here analyzed for a total of 224 unresectable cholangiocarcinoma cases, 58.9% in men. The mean age was 61.5 years. Hilar involvement was the most common location. The patients underwent biliary drainage using plastic and metallic stents equally, early stent occlusion being encountered in 21.4% and 10.7%, respectively. The median survival time was 4.93 months for patients who received plastic and 5.87 months for patients who received metallic stents.
Highlights
Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) is a fatal malignancy that accounts for 10-25% of primary hepatobiliary cancers (Anderson et al, 2012)
The etiology of CCA in Asian countries appears related to infestation by liver fluke, the Opistorchiidae family (Shin et al, 2010), whereas CCA in Western countries is caused by chronic bile duct inflammation, primary sclerosing cholangitis
We conducted the present retrospective study to highlight the clinical manifestations, diagnosis, and treatment outcomes of patients with unresectable CCA who underwent only biliary drainage without any adjuvant therapy in our tertiary care university hospital located in central Thailand
Summary
Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) is a fatal malignancy that accounts for 10-25% of primary hepatobiliary cancers (Anderson et al, 2012). In Western countries, approximately 60-70% of cases of CCA were reported to be hilar CCA, whereas distal and intrahepatic CCA comprised 20-30 and 5-10% of cases, respectively (Nagino et al, 2008; Akamatsu et al, 2011; Sangchan et al, 2012; Anderson et al, 2012). The patients with distal CCA had better clinical outcomes than those with hilar or intrahepatic CCA (Aslanian and Jamidar, 2011; Sangchan et al, 2012; Anderson et al, 2012; Ruys et al, 2012). We conducted the present retrospective study to highlight the clinical manifestations, diagnosis, and treatment outcomes of patients with unresectable CCA who underwent only biliary drainage without any adjuvant therapy in our tertiary care university hospital located in central Thailand
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