The role of sarcopenia in the pancreatic adenocarcinoma

Pancreaticoduodenectomy is still associated with prolonged hospitalization and with a lot of complications. For these reasons, it is fundamental to improve strategies for preoperative risk stratification, and sarcopenia is one of the new identified markers of frailty. The purpose of our study was to retrospectively detect sarcopenia in patients undergoing pancreaticoduodenectomy and evaluate its importance as a preoperative marker.

We retrospectively identified a total amount of 76 consecutive patients who underwent pancreaticoduodenectomy for pancreatic head adenocarcinoma. Patients' and tumor's characteristics were recorded retrospectively.

It appears that sarcopenia might be a useful preoperative prognostic factor for patients undergoing PD for PA. We found that Recurrence Free Survival may be influenced by presence or absence of preoperative sarcopenia, and we can confirm that in sarcopenic patients the average hospital stay is 20% longer than in non sarcopenic ones.

Sarcopenia has a central role because it is a very common condition found in pancreatic cancer patients; there is growing evidence showing that it is associated with worse surgical outcomes. We can state that evaluating sarcopenia in cancer patients could improve the postoperative outcomes, overall survival rates and, nevertheless, the recurrence free survival ones.