摘 要: | Pancreatic cancer ranks tenth in terms of newly diagnosed cases, but just 10%–15% of these patients can undergo resection. Survival after curative surgery is dismal, as recurrences occur either locally or in the liver. Adjuvant treatment with either chemotherapy or chemoradiation (with or without maintenance chemotherapy) has been employed, to improve the poor prognosis. Justification for the use of chemoradiation, with follow on chemotherapy, is based on the results of an underpowered 1987 GITSG study, which closed prematurely and compared intervention to observation. There has been no survival advantage demonstrated in the one randomized controlled trial that examined chemoradiation compared to chemotherapy. There is a clear cut survival advantage however with chemotherapy compared to observation, based on the results from two large randomized controlled trials, and supported by an individual patient data meta-analysis. The standard of care for adjuvant therapy based on level I evidence (from the ESPAC-1 trial) is post operative chemotherapy using 5-Fluorouracil with folinic acid providing a best estimate of 29% five years survival.
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