Clinical benefit of radiation therapy and metallic stenting for unresectable hilar cholangiocarcinoma

Table 1 Patient characteristics

	Patient group
	Radiotherapy	BSC	Resection	Pvalue
Cases	28	11	25
Gender (M/F)	14/14	4/7	20/5
Mean age (yr)	70.1 ± 9.7 (52-86)	74.0 ± 9.0 (61-90)	67.0 ± 9.7 (55-78)
Reason for non-resection				> 0.9999
Tumor factor	21	9	-
Patient factor	7	2	-
Performance status
0	12	3	17
1	15	6	8
2	1	2	0
TNM stage				0.4953
1a	0	0	7
1b	2	2	1
2a	1	0	3
2b	1	1	8
3	24	8	6
Bismuth classification				0.2332
1	3	0	2
2	6	3	2
3	7	6	10
4	12	2	11

No statistically significant differences in patient characteristics were observed among the resection, radiotherapy, and BSC groups. The mean age of the BSC patients was higher than that of the other groups, but the difference was not significant. TNM: Tumor, node, metastasis; BSC: Best supportive care.