Is Hepatic Resection for Large or Multifocal Intrahepatic Cholangiocar

I came across this article when CC.org shared it on FB. Julie I agree with what you have said. Duke, I really enjoy reading your posts (I know I don’t respond of post often these days) but I still try to keep “tabs” on everyone.
When I had my surgery in January I was considered multifocal; one main tumor and one satellite. They were both removed and the main tumor was measured at 13cm and the satellite, 2cm. Hugs and blessings to all.
Porter

Duke….I agree with you. That first sentence does certainly disagree with what most doctors/surgeons say. Upon doing surgery, my surgeon found a second, very small tumor close to the 5 c.m tumor…and thus I was said to be multifocal. Fortunately, she went ahead with the surgery and in fact she did not refer to that small nodule as being a met or satellite tumor, but instead, a “sister” tumor.

I may be oversimplifying the issue, but it seems to me that if more tumors are found , as long as they are at least in the same area as the one for which surgery was planned initially, why not go ahead?….esp if other parameters are good….such as no lymph node metastasis, at least moderate differentiation….after all….IMO…”some” chance is better than no chance at all.

In my case, they did not know the 2nd nodule was present…until they did an exploratory at the start of surgery, used an intra abdominal ultrasound on the liver and found the 2nd nodule. My surgeon went ahead…but what if she’d seen 2 or 3 or more….would she have gone ahead? I don’t know ….the subject never came up. I am certain that there are some on the boards who have had surgery with larger tumors than this study. It would be interesting to find out who was over that 7 c.m. size and if they’ve had a recurrence.

This link and discussion is one that I often think about. I know that others have had surgery on bigger tumors than mine was (5 c.m) but I didn’t know what the cut off was. I was surprised to see the 7 c.m. size considered large.

The results aren’t great, as you say, but IMO…it’s better than being told there’s nothing to be done…..and it just seems to reason that if you get rid of the offending tumor, there’s less chance of spread or further spread….and even adjuvant chemo has a chance to kill off microscopic cells and stop it altogether. Am I looking at this too simplistically?

Julie T.