Impact of hepatitis C virus on survival in patients undergoing resection of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma: report of a Japanese nationwide survey.

Aim We reviewed the data of a nationwide follow-up survey to determine the impact of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection on the outcomes of hepatectomy for intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) of the mass-forming (MF) type and combined mass-forming and periductal infiltrating (MF+PI) types. Methods In total, 956 patients with ICC who underwent curative hepatic resection were included in this cohort study, and patients were classified according to virus status. Patients were classified according to virus status as follows: HCV-related ICC (n=138, 14.4%), hepatitis B virus (HBV)-related ICC (n=43, 4.5%), and non-virus-related ICC (n=775, 81.1%). To control for variables, we used 1-to-1 propensity score matching to compare outcomes after surgery between the HCV-related (n=102) and the non-virus-related ICC cases (n=102). Results We successfully matched HCV-related and non-virus-related ICC cases with similar liver function and tumor characteristics. Patients with HCV-related ICC had significantly shorter recurrence-free survival (RFS; hazard ratio [HR] 0.62, 95% confidence interval [Cl] 0.42-0.92, P=.016) and overall survival (OS; HR: 0.57, 95% Cl: 0.37-0.88, P=.011) than patients with non-virus-related ICC. Cox proportional hazard analysis demonstrated that HCV-related ICC offered a worse prognosis than non-virus-related ICC. Conclusions HCV infection increases the risk of recurrence and worsens OS in patients after curative resection for MF and combined MF+PI type ICC. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.