Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma trends and treatment lines: real-world evidence from the French National Hospital Discharge database

Background

Little is known about the therapeutic trajectory of patients treated in hospitals for intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (iCCA) and patterns of care in daily clinical practice.

Patients and methods

An observational retrospective study was conducted on the French National Hospital Discharge Database. All patients with a new diagnosis of iCCA who had a first hospital stay (S1) from January 2016 to December 2021 were included. They were followed up until December 2021, or in-hospital death, whichever occurred first. Crude annual hospitalization rates were computed. Treatment lines were identified with an artificial intelligence algorithm [Analysis of Treatment Lines using Alignment of Sequences (ATLAS)]. A multistate model was used to compute the transition rates between lines.

Results

Overall, 13 491 patients were included and the mean (standard deviation) follow-up duration was 13.1 months (17.9 months). The median age at S1 was 72.0 years and 55.9% were male. Nearly 20.7% were admitted via emergency services for S1, and 32.1% had metastases. Between 2016 and 2021, the crude annual rate of new iCCA cases increased from 3.08 [95% confidence interval (CI) 2.94-3.24] in 2016 (n = 1598) to 4.12 (95% CI 3.95-4.29) per 100 000 adult person-years in 2021 (n = 2188). Among 4855 patients receiving first-line systemic therapy (L1), 37.7% (95% CI 36.0% to 39.3%) received a second-line 2 (L2) during the follow-up. The median time between the start of L1 and the beginning of L2 was 7.0 months.

Conclusions

This study provides up-to-date national real-world data on iCCA, revealing an increasing burden year by year in France, a poor outcome of patients with iCCA on L1 systemic therapy, and the low proportion of patients receiving an L2.