Immunotherapy in biliary tract cancers: Current evidence and future perspectives.

Bile duct tumors are comprised of tumors that originate from both intrahepatic and extrahepatic bile ducts and gallbladder tumors. These are aggressive tumors and chemotherapy is still the main treatment for advanced-stage disease and most of these cases have a poor overall survival. Strategies are aimed at treatments with better outcomes and less toxicity which makes immunotherapy an area of ​​significant importance. Recent Food and Drug Administration approvals of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) for agnostic tumors based on biomarkers such as microsatellite instability-high and tumor mutation burden-high are important steps in the treatment of patients with advanced bile duct tumors. Despite limited responses with isolated checkpoint inhibitors in later lines of systemic treatment in advanced disease, drug combination strategies have been demonstrating encouraging results to enhance ICI efficacy.

Pushing the limits of liver surgery for colorectal liver metastases: Current state and future directions.

Liver surgery for the treatment of colorectal liver metastases is the standard treatment in a dynamic surgical field with many variables that should be considered in a curative intent scenario. Hepatectomy for colorectal liver metastases has undergone constant changes over the last 30 years, including indications until the need for rescue procedures of recurrent and advanced diseases as well as minimally invasive surgery. These advancements in liver surgery have not only resulted from overall improvements in the surgical field but have also resulted from a better understanding of the biological behavior of the disease, liver regeneration, and homeostasis during and after surgery. Improvements in anesthesiology, intensive care medicine, radiology, and surgical devices have correlated with further advancements of hepatectomies. Moreover, changes are still forthcoming, and both fields of augmented reality and artificial intelligence will likely have future contributions in this field in regard to both diagnoses and the planning of procedures. The aim of this editorial is to emphasize several aspects that have contributed to the paradigm shifts in colorectal liver metastases surgery over the last three decades as well as to discuss the factors concerning patient selection and the technical aspects of liver surgery. Finally, this editorial will highlight the promising new features of this surgery for diagnoses and treatments in this field.

Does autologous blood transfusion during liver transplantation for hepatocellular carcinoma increase risk of recurrence?

AIM: To analyze outcomes in patients who underwent liver transplantation (LT) for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and received autologous intraoperative blood salvage (IBS). METHODS: Consecutive HCC patients who underwent LT were studied retrospectively and analyzed according to the use of IBS or not. Demographic and surgical data were collected from a departmental prospective maintained database. Statistical analyses were performed using the Fisher's exact test and the Wilcoxon rank sum test to examine covariate differences between patients who underwent IBS and those who did not. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression models were developed to evaluate recurrence and death, and survival probabilities were estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method and compared by the log-rank test. RESULTS: Between 2002 and 2012, 158 consecutive patients who underwent LT in the same medical center and by the same surgical team were identified. Among these patients, 122 (77.2%) were in the IBS group and 36 (22.8%) in the non-IBS group. The overall survival (OS) and recurrence free survival (RFS) at 5 years were 59.7% and 83.3%, respectively. No differences in OS (P = 0.51) or RFS (P = 0.953) were detected between the IBS and non-IBS groups. On multivariate analysis for OS, degree of tumor differentiation remained as the only independent predictor. Regarding patients who received IBS, no differences were detected in OS or RFS (P = 0.055 and P = 0.512, respectively) according to the volume infused, even when outcomes at 90 d or longer were analyzed separately (P = 0.518 for both outcomes). CONCLUSION: No differences in RFS or OS were detected according to IBS use. Trials addressing this question are justified and should be designed to detect small differences in long-term outcomes.