Adjuvant therapy in pancreatic cancer

The outlook for patients with pancreatic cancer has been grim. There have been major advances in the surgical treatment of pancreatic cancer, leading to a dramatic reduction in post-operative mortality from the development of high volume specialized centres. This stimulated the study of adjuvant and neoadjuvant treatments in pancreatic cancer including chemoradiotherapy and chemotherapy. Initial protocols have been based on the original but rather small GITSG study first reported in 1985. There have been two large European trials totalling over 600 patients (EORTC and ESPAC-1) that do not support the use of chemoradiation as adjuvant therapy. A second major finding from the ESPAC-1 trial (541 patients randomized) was some but not conclusive evidence for a survival benefit associated with chemotherapy. A third major finding from the ESPAC-1 trial was that the quality of life was not affected by the use of adjuvant treatments compared to surgery alone. The ESPAC-3 trial aims to assess the definitive use of adjuvant chemotherapy in a randomized controlled trial of 990 patients.