Screening and 6-month surveillance interval ultrasonography in early detection of cholangiocarcinoma in an endemic area.

Improvement of Survival Outcomes of Cholangiocarcinoma by Ultrasonography Surveillance: Multicenter Retrospective Cohorts

“…Tumor morphology has been classified into four types, mass-forming (MF), periductal-infiltrating (PI), intraductal (ID), and mixed types. Basically, ID is represented as good survival in tumor morphology while PI and MF are associated with aggressive features and poor survival of patients [12,21,[32][33][34][35][36][37][38]. This information has recently been confirmed and shows that tumor morphology relates and predicts the survival outcome of all types of CCA after curative surgical treatment.…”

“…Therefore, a 5-YSR for patients with dCCA (38.8%) was significantly better than iCCA (21.1%) and pCCA (18.3%) as presented in walk in groups (Table 2). US screening has been reported as a tool for the early detection of premalignant lesions and early stage of CCA [15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. The suspected CCA cases without symptoms from preliminary detection were diagnosed as all types of CCA, especially iCCA and pCCA for which there are no symptoms until advanced stage, resulting in early treatment, surveillance, and improvement of overall survival.…”

“…This prospective study consisted of two cohorts, the screening cohort included people at risk of CCA without any symptoms who received active ultrasound screening, and the patient cohort included symptomatic walk-in patients [20]. Results showed that US screening can diagnose early signs of biliary tract fibrosis (periductal fibrosis) that is associated with CCA [15] as well as detecting premalignant CCA lesions and early stage CCA [21]. Subsequently, CCA patients who were diagnosed by US screening had significantly higher proportion of early stage CCA compared to symptomatic walk-in patients [17].…”