Background: The most accepted treatment for locally advanced pancreatic cancer is chemoradiotherapy. However, indications to and results of pancreatic resections after chemoradiation are not yet defined.
Methods: From June 1999 to December 2003, 28 patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer (group 1) were enrolled for institutional trials of gemcitabine-based chemoradiotherapy. Tumors were stratified as unresectable or borderline resectable according to the pattern of vascular involvement at pretreatment computed tomographic scan. Patients with partial response or stable disease and in-range Ca19-9 were surgically explored. Perioperative outcome and survival of group 1 were compared with 44 patients primary resected for localized cancer with or without adjuvant treatment in the same time period (group 2).
Results: Only one unresectable tumor was successfully resected compared to 7 out of 18 (39%) that were borderline resectable. Operations after chemoradiation were 1 hour longer and postoperative stays 5 days longer, but transfusion rate, morbidity, and mortality were not significantly different. Median survival was 15.4 months for group 1 (>21 for resected vs. 10 for not resected, P < 0.01) and 14 months for group 2. In both groups, a disease-free survival beyond 24 months was recorded only among patients resected with negative margins.
Conclusions: The conversion of an unresectable cancer to a resectable one is a rare event. On the contrary, the resection of a borderline resectable tumor was successfully accomplished in one-third of cases. Chemoradiotherapy did not increase the operative risk, but the interventions were more technically demanding and required a longer postoperative stay. Patients resected after chemoradiation for a locally advanced tumor had at least the same survival as those primary resected for a localized one. Only R0 resections in both groups gave the chance of disease-free survival longer than 24 months.