Survival benefit of surgical treatment for elderly patients with intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma: a retrospective cohort study in the seer database by propensity score matching analysis

Despite a rising trend in intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) incidence in the elderly population worldwide, the benefit of surgery for those patients is still controversial. Data from 811 elderly patients diagnosed with non-metastatic ICC were obtained from the US surveillance, epidemiology, and end results (SEER) program database. Propensity score matched (PSM) was conducted for the better balance of baseline. The associations between tumor characteristics and surgery with overall survival (OS) and cancer specific survival (CSS) were estimated using hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). The results showed that ICC patients above 60 years old taking surgery had better OS (hazard ratio [HR], 0.258; 95% CI, 0.205-0.324) and CSS (hazard ratio [HR], 0.239; 95% CI, 0.188-0.303) than patients without surgery. Similar trends in patients above 65 years old, above 70 years old, above 75 years old, and above 80 years old were observed, separately. This benefit was also showed in lymph node-negative (N0) and lymph node-positive (N1) subgroups and N0 patients are more likely to take an advantage from surgery than N1 patients. The different outcomes between surgery and non-surgery suggest that surgical treatment may be recommended for elderly ICC if the tumor is resectable to ensure optimal treatment.