Is distal pancreatectomy with en-bloc celiac axis resection effective for patients with locally advanced pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma? -Multicenter surgical group study.

Objective: We retrospectively investigated the operative outcomes of patients who underwent distal pancreatectomy (DP) for invasive pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) located at the body and tail.

Methods: Data from 395 patients with PDAC who underwent DP with margin-negative resection (R0 or R1) were collected from seven high-volume centers in Japan from 2001 to 2012. Among them, 72 patients underwent DP with en-bloc celiac axis resection (DP-CAR). The remaining 323 patients underwent conventional DP with splenectomy (DP-S). To determine the efficacy of DP-CAR, clinicopathological data were compared between the DP-CAR and the DP-S groups.

Results: The DP-S group consisted mainly of patients with resectable disease (93%), and conversely, all patients in the DP-CAR group had borderline resectable or unresectable disease. The overall morbidity was significantly higher in the DP-CAR group than in the DP-S group (63% vs 47%, respectively; P = 0.017). The median survival time (MST) of the DP-CAR group was significantly shorter than that of the DP-S group (17.5 vs 28.6 months, respectively; P = 0.004). However, the MST of patients in the DP-CAR group (n = 61, 85%) who received adjuvant therapy was significantly longer than that of patients in the DP-S group (n = 65, 20%) who underwent R1 resection (21.9 vs 16.7 months, respectively; P = 0.024).

Conclusions: DP-CAR followed by adjuvant chemotherapy provided an acceptable overall survival rate in patients with highly advanced PDAC, but should be performed with great caution because of high morbidity. Patients with a high risk of positive surgical margins with DP-S may be candidates for DP-CAR.