[Impact of duodenopancreatectomy in elder patients]

The incidence of periampullary neoplasms substantially increases with age. If we take into account that this incidence is higher in the elder patient and that life expectancy is nowadays longer, questioning surgical approach in this group of patients turns out to be controversial.

[corrected] Asses if in the elder patients the duodenopancreatectomy has a higher mortality and complications.

A retrospective study including patients who underwent duodenopancreatectomy between October 2002 and June 2012 was undertaken to assess whether the elder ones had a higher morbidity and mortality after surgery. Patients were distributed in two groups according to age. The first group included 240 patients younger than 75 years, and the second one included 74 patients older than 75 years. There wasn't NO significant difference in morbidity between the two groups.

General mortality for the whole series was 4%. The first group had a 2.9% mortality whereas in the second one mortality reached 4.9%, a significant difference. However, when we changed the reference age from 75 years to 65 or 70 years the difference was not significant any more.

From this study we can ascertain that an age more than 75 years significantly increases the mortality risk in duodenopancreatectomy patients. This age, however, doesn't proscribe surgical approach, since surgery is the only choice for curative treatment in patients with this type of cancer.