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Updated: Aug 23, 2025
Treatment of Liver Metastases Using an Internal Target Volume Method for Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy
Published on: May 8, 2018
The Effects of Radiotherapy on Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma in Patients with Liver Metastases
Linxia Wu1,2, Yuting Lu1,2, Lei Chen1,2,3
1Department of Radiology, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, China.
Background:
While radiotherapy has been studied in the treatment of locally advanced pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), few studies have analyzed the effects of radiotherapy on PDAC in patients with liver metastases. This study aimed to determine whether PDAC patients with liver metastases have improved survival after radiotherapy treatment.
Methods:
The data of 8535 patients who were diagnosed with PDAC with liver metastases between 2010 and 2015 were extracted from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. Survival analysis and Cox proportional hazards regression analysis of cancer-specific mortality and overall survival were performed, and propensity score matching (PSM) was used to reduce selection bias.
Results:
After PSM, the median overall survival (mOS) and median cancer-specific survival (mCSS) in the radiotherapy group were longer than those in the nonradiotherapy group (OS: 6 months vs. 4 months; mCSS: 6 months vs. 5 months, both p < 0.05), respectively. The multivariate analysis showed that cancer-specific mortality rates were higher in the nonradiotherapy group than in the radiotherapy group (HR: 1.174, 95% CI: 1.035-1.333, p = 0.013). The Cox regression analysis according to subgroups showed that the survival benefits (OS and CSS) of radiotherapy were more significant in patients with tumor sizes greater than 4 cm (both p < 0.05).
Conclusions:
PDAC patients with liver metastases, particularly those with tumor sizes greater than 4 cm, have improved cancer-specific survival (CSS) rates after receiving radiotherapy.
