Postoperative radiotherapy in periampullary cancers: a brief review

The treatment of periampullary cancers is complex and challenging. Adjuvant therapy for resected periampullary and pancreatic cancers has been the subject of intense clinical investigations for several decades. Periampullary cancer management has often been clubbed with pancreatic cancers.

Following surgery, adjuvant chemoradiotherapy has been widely accepted as standard of care in the USA, although different prospective and retrospective studies have shown conflicting results. Controversy regarding the effectiveness of chemoradiotherapy exists in the literature, both in terms of survival as well as toxicity. However, conventional postoperative radiotherapy practice needs to be reviewed in view of changes and developments in radiation techniques in the last decade. In this article, we review the management of periampullary cancers with special emphasis on the adjuvant postoperative radiotherapy.