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 ( 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.