REVIEW article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Gastrointestinal Cancers: Hepato Pancreatic Biliary Cancers
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1590019
Impact of lymph node dissection on the prognosis of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Provisionally accepted
- 1Yueyang Hospital Affiliated to Hunan Normal University, Yueyang, Hunan Province, China
- 2Yueyang People's Hospital, Yueyang, China
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Background: Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (iCCA) is a malignant tumor second only to hepatocellular carcinoma in terms of incidence among primary liver cancers. Surgical resection is currently the preferred treatment for iCCA. However, the prognostic significance, complications, and clinical benefits of lymph node dissection (LND) in iCCA patients remain a topic of debate within the academic community.To evaluate the impact of LND on overall survival (OS) and prognosis in patients with resectable iCCA, studies published from various databases, including PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library.A meta-analysis was conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. The impact of LND on prognosis was analyzed.Results: A total of 5,787 patients from twenty-one retrospective cohorts were included in the final analysis. The results indicated that clinically node-negative patients who underwent LND had significantly better survival outcomes compared to those who did not undergo LND (P<0.01). In the R0 resection subgroup, LND was associated with improved survival compared to non-LND (P<0.01), while in the non-R0 resection subgroup, the LND group exhibited significantly fewer survival benefits than the non-LND group (P<0.01). When Compared to patients in the non-LND group, those in the LND N-group demonstrated significantly greater survival (P<0.05), while patients in the LND N+ group experienced significantly shorter OS (P<0.01).Patients with resectable iCCA who underwent LND had better survival outcomes compared to those who did not undergo LND. Therefore, routine LND should be performed for clinically lymph node-negative (cLNM-) iCCA patients.
Keywords: intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, Lymph node dissection, Lymphadenectomy, prognosis. 2 Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, prognosis
Received: 08 Mar 2025; Accepted: 11 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yu, Zhou, Tan, Guo and Fen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Fan Zhou, Yueyang People's Hospital, Yueyang, China
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