Annals of surgical oncology
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For patients with potentially resectable pancreatic cancer, the poor outcome associated with resection alone and the survival advantage demonstrated for combined-modality therapy have stimulated interest in preoperative chemoradiotherapy. The goal of this study was to analyze the effects of different preoperative chemoradiotherapy schedules, intraoperative radiation therapy, patient factors. and histopathologic variables on survival duration and patterns of treatment failure in patients who underwent pancreaticoduodenectomy for adenocarcinoma of the pancreatic head. ⋯ This analysis supports prior studies which suggest that the survival duration of patients with potentially resectable pancreatic cancer is maximized by the combination of chemoradiation and pancreaticoduodenectomy. Furthermore, there was no difference in survival duration between patients who received the less toxic rapid-fractionation chemoradiotherapy schedule (30 Gy, 2 weeks) and those who received standard-fractionation chemoradiotherapy (50.4 Gy, 5.5 weeks). Short-course rapid-fractionation preoperative chemoradiotherapy combined with pancreaticoduodenectomy, when performed on accurately staged patients, maximizes survival duration and is associated with a low incidence of local tumor recurrence.