[Curative surgical treatment of inoperable pancreatic cancer after neoadjuvant therapy]

In the treatment of pancreatic cancer only curative resection increases the life expectancy. Radical resection is a high risk operation, but it can be performed with low peri-operational mortality in specialist surgical centres. At the time of diagnosis most patients are in stage (TMN of pancreatic cancer UICC 1997) III or IV, thus curative resection cannot be performed. Neo-adjuvant therapy shrinks the tumour in 60-70%, giving new hope for the patients. In this paper authors present two cases of pancreatic cancer resections. Palliative operations were performed in patients with inoperable pancreatic cancer. Later neo-adjuvant chemotherapy was performed--in these cases it meant chemotherapy--and after that a second, this time curative procedure was performed.