Surgical treatment of liver metastases from pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer is a disease with a poor prognosis. Most patients are diagnosed at an advanced and unresectable stage. Even if the primary cancer is radically removed, postoperative recurrence frequently occurs. Generally, metastatic liver tumors from pancreatic cancer are not indicated for surgical treatment. Here we evaluate the results of performing hepatectomy for liver metastases of pancreatic cancer. In our institute, six patients with liver metastases from pancreatic cancer were treated by partial hepatectomy. Overall 1-, 3- and 5-year survival rates of six patients after hepatectomy were 66.7%, 33.3% and 16.7%, respectively, and one patient was alive for 65.4 months. Performing a hepatectomy for liver metastases of pancreatic cancer, when combined with a pancreas resection, was recently considered to be a safe operation, and one that might offer prolonged survival for highly selected patients with curative resection of liver metastases. In the future, it will be necessary to develop new multi-modality therapies to improve the prognosis of pancreatic cancer.