Recent 5‑year trends in biliary tract cancer survival rates: An analytical big data survey

Biliary tract cancer (BTC), also known as cholangiocarcinoma, is a relatively rare type of cancer with a poor prognosis. Despite the combination of chemotherapy and advances in targeted therapy, which have potentially improved the prognosis of patients with BTC, research on outcomes remains inadequate. The present study thus analyzed the survival trends of patients with BTC. The present study used anonymized data from a public national database and focused on 13,600 individuals diagnosed with BTC between 2015 and 2020. The overall and 1-year mortality rates were analyzed according to cancer anatomic sites, along with the impact of comorbidities, such as diabetes and hepatitis on these rates. A total of 13,600 patients were included in the analysis; 26.31% of the patients had intrahepatic BTC, 27.46% had extrahepatic BTC and 46.24% had gallbladder (GB) cancer. For all BTC types, the 1-year survival hazard ratio (HR) in 2018 was 0.992 compared with that in 2015, and 0.986 in 2019. Compared with intrahepatic BTC, the 1-year survival rate was 0.349 for GB cancer and 0.641 for extrahepatic BTC. Patients with diabetes had an HR of 1.318 compared with those without diabetes. For patients with BTC previously diagnosed with GB stones, the survival HR was 0.902, compared to those without GB stones. On the whole, the analysis of national healthcare big data indicated an improvement in the overall prognosis of patients with BTC from 2018. Moreover, these data highlight that the prognosis of patients with BTC is influenced by the anatomical location of the cancer, and that co-existing medical conditions in patients affect the survival rate.