[Neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapy of ductal pancreatic carcinoma]

The optimal oncological management of ductal pancreatic cancer remains undefined. More than 60% of these patients have disseminated disease at the time of presentation. Here radical surgery alone cannot guarantee a cure. Even in the best case of a R0-resection with extended lymph node dissection the reported 5-year survival rates of 20-30% are dissatisfying. This would suggest that neoadjuvant or adjuvant therapies may play an even greater role in improving the medium and long-term survival rates than in other tumor entities. Reports in the literature to date are from small randomised trials which do not elucidate the benefit of therapy. However, it does appear that neoadjuvant radiochemotherapy in combination with R0-resection will best improve patient outcome and mean survival rates. Therefore there is a need for large prospective randomized studies regarding (neo-)adjuvant therapy. Inclusion criteria must be precisely defined and the following factors recorded: standardized preoperative staging procedures extent of tumor disease (histology, stage, vascular infiltration, lymph node involvement, etc.) detailed surgical approach in respect to the extent of pancreas resection and lymph node dissection. Pancreas resections tend to have a higher postoperative complication rate when compared with other tumours and substantial postoperative weight loss often is observed. This may result in a delay or even impossibility of starting adjuvant therapy right in time in a relevant part of patients (up to 1/3 according to literature data) which is a major disadvantage of all adjuvant therapy concepts.