Survival outcome comparative analysis of Liver transplantation and radical resection surgery for Klatskin tumor

Objective: To compare the survival results of liver transplantation with radical resection for klatskin tumor based on the published literatures. Methods: We retrieved Medline for articles on treatment of klatskin tumor published from January 1996 to December 2014, and choose the literatures including liver transplantation and radical resection. Review Manager 5.0 software was used to perform the Meta-analysis of the extracted data. Results: After performing meta-analysis of 11 studies including 676 patients, we found comparable patient survival rate between liver transplantation group and radical resection group (1-year RR:1.00, 95% CI:0.82-1.23, P = 0.97; 3-year RR:1.15, 95% CI:0.75-1.77, P = 0.51, 5 - year RR: 1.37, 95% CI:0.74-2.53, P = 0.32, respectively). No statistical significance of overall survival rate were shown between this 2 groups whether in short-term or long-time, but the total survival trends show the long-time survival of LT group is better than that of RR group which has the potential longer survival time. Conclusions: Liver transplantation was equivalent to radical resection for klatskin tumor treatment in terms of patient survival, with potential higher long-term patient survival rate and lower recurrence, especially for the patients with unrespectable KT or insufficient liver function, LT is superior for clinical outcome.