Epidemiology and surgical management of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma.

Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) is a rare hepatobiliary malignancy arising from the epithelial cells of the intrahepatic bile ducts. The increased incidence of ICC worldwide may reflect both a true increase and the earlier detection of the disease. Despite the advances in modern surgical care, the curative chance for ICC remained suboptimal: tumor-free margins are hard to achieve due to tumor locations, and technical challenges and recurrence, either local or distant, may hamper the resectability in a large number of patients. Lymph node involvement and vascular invasions are considered negative predictive factors for survival of ICC patients. This review discusses the epidemiology, risk factors and surgical management of ICCs, and mainly focuses on outcomes and factors associated with surgical treatment.
Competing Interests: Financial & competing interests disclosure This study was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81472284, 81372262 and 81172020); Program for Excellent Young Scholars of SMMU; Charitable Project on Cancer Research of Shanghai and State Key Project on Infectious Diseases of China (No. 2012ZX10002–016). The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed. No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.