Abstract
Combined hepatocellular and cholangiocarcinoma (CHC) is rare and its clinicopathological features have not been fully elucidated. The features of surgically treated CHC patients (n=6) were retrospectively investigated and compared to those of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) (n=377) and cholangiocellular carcinoma (CCC) (n=36).
All patients with CHC were male and 83% of them showed viral hepatitis marker positive, chronic hepatitis or liver cirrhosis in the background liver, and tumors having vascular invasion. All CHC patients had greater than stage III disease and their 1-year and 2-year postoperative survival rates were 66% and 16%, respectively. CHC patients were younger and male dominant, and more frequently related to chronic hepatitis/liver cirrhosis than CCC patients, but these factors were similarly distributed compared to HCC patients. CHC patients had higher rate of CEA positivity than HCC and higher PIVKA-II positivity than CCC. CHC patients showed more lymph nodes or peritoneal recurrence than HCC. Postoperative survival was significantly poorer in CHC patients than HCC patients, and poor but statistically similar to that of CCC patients.
In CHC patients, their clinical backgrounds were similar to those of HCC, but postoperative survival rate and type of recurrence were similar to those of CCC patients.
