Abstract
Purpose
Patients with unresectable intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) have poor survival. Conventional transarterial chemoembolization (c-TACE) and drug-eluting beads transarterial chemoembolization (DEB-TACE) are two treatment options for ICC, and this systematic review describes the efficacy of each of these modalities for unresectable ICC to guide clinical practice.
Methods
A literature search was performed in PubMed, Web of Science, and Embase databases regarding transhepatic arterial chemoembolization for intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma. The Newcastle–Ottawa quality assessment Scale (NOS) was used to assess the risk of bias. Tumor response, disease control, and 1-, 2-, 3-year overall survival rate were pooled for estimation.
Results
The number of initial search results was 1035, and 19 articles met the inclusion criteria for this study after the screening. A total of 23 study cohorts and 1091 patients were provided. The pooled objective response rate (ORR) for c-TACE and DEB-TACE treating ICC was 29.4% (95% CI 11.6–50.8%) and 51.2% (95% CI 30.6–71.7%), respectively; disease control rate (DCR) was 72.8% (95% CI 55.6–87.3%) and 88.7% (95% CI 78.8–96.2%), respectively. The pooled survival rate at 1 year, 2 year, and 3 year was 49.7% (95% CI 39.1–60.3%), 24.0% (95% CI 12.6–37.3%), and 23.5% (95% CI 11.1–38.7%) for c-TACE; 58.6% (95% CI 44.2–72.3%), 26.7% (95% CI 18.1–36.3%), and 16.2% (95% CI 6.0–29.4%) for DEB-TACE.
Conclusion
The descriptive analysis suggested that DEB-TACE treatment for ICC may have better tumor response and disease control rates than c-TACE treatment, but the impact on overall survival was not demonstrated significantly by DEB-TACE treatment.
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Availability of data and materials
The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Funding
This study was funded by the Youth Science Foundation Project (81901713) for Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China.
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All the authors have approved the manuscript and have contributed significantly to the work. XY put up the idea for the article. MH and NJ performed the literature search and data analysis, and disagreement was discussed with XY. The first draft of the manuscript was written by MH. The work was critically commented on by all authors and revised by KM and AX.
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He, M., Jiang, N., Yin, X. et al. Conventional and drug-eluting beads transarterial chemoembolization in patients with unresectable intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma: a systematic review and pooled analysis. J Cancer Res Clin Oncol 149, 531–540 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00432-022-04485-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00432-022-04485-1