Background: Whether microvascular invasion (MVI) adversely influences oncological outcomes for intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) patients remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of MVI on postoperative survival and establish a new predictive model for MVI before surgical intervention in patients with ICC. Methods: In this two-center retrospective study, 556 and 31 consecutive patients who underwent curative liver resection for ICC at ZSH and XJFH were analyzed, respectively. Propensity score matching (PSM) and Cox regression analyses were used to explore the prognostic role of MVI on the OS and DFS. Multivariate logistic regression was used to identify the relative risk factors of MVI, which were incorporated into the nomogram. Results: After PSM, 50 MVI cases matched with 172 non-MVI cases, and no bias was observed between the two groups (propensity score, 0.118 (0.099, 0.203) vs. 0.115 (0.059, 0.174), p=0.251). The multivariate Cox analysis showed that MVI was negatively associated with OS (HR 1.635, 95% CI 1.405-1.993, p=0.04) and DFS (HR 1.596, 95% CI 1.077-2.366, p=0.02). The independent factors associated with MVI were ALT, AFP, tumor maximal diameter, and tumor capsule. The nomogram that incorporated these variables achieved good concordance indexes for predicting MVI. Patients with a cutoff score of 168 were considered to have different risks of the presence of MVI preoperatively. Conclusions: The presence of MVI was an adverse prognostic factor for ICC patients. Using the nomogram model, the risk of an individual patient harboring MVI was determined, which led to a rational therapeutic choice.
Keywords: Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma; Microvascular invasion; Nomogram; Propensity score matching; Survival Analysis.
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