BACKGROUND: Most of the reports on the prognostic indi-cators of patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma are from developed countries. The present study focused on the prog-nostic indicators of Chinese patients with pancreatic adeno-carcinoma.
METHODS: A total of 300 patients with pancreatic adenocar-cinoma who had undergone curative resection were included. The resection and R0/R1 resection rates for adenocarcinomas from different parts of the pancreas were calculated and clini-cal characteristics were analyzed.
RESULTS: In 3427 patients diagnosed with pancreatic adeno-carcinomas, only 300 (8.8%) were eligible for radical resection. The total median survival of these patients was 19 months, and their 1-, 3-, and 5-year survival rates were 72.5%, 28.0%and 23.4%, respectively. The prognostic factors included so-cioeconomic status, smoking history, symptoms, high blood glucose, and various tumor characteristics, including perineu-ral and vascular invasion, lymph node metastases, and CA19-9 levels before and after operation. Operation-associated prog-nostic indicators included operation time, blood loss and transfusions, pancreatic ifstula, and complications. Indepen-dent predictors of mortality included poor socioeconomic sta-tus, smoking history, symptoms, CA19-9, perineural invasion and lymph node metastasis, grade of ifstula and complications. Patient survival was not correlated with either resection mar-gin or adjuvant chemotherapy in multivariate analysis.
CONCLUSIONS: The survival rates of patients with curative resection for pancreatic adenocarcinoma in China are close to those in developed countries, but curative resection rate is far below. Socioeconomic status, symptoms, and CA19-9 are the three most prominent prognostic factors, which are helpful in patient selection and perioperative care.