Gemcitabine treatment in patients with inoperable locally advanced/metastatic pancreatic cancer and prognostic factors.

Objective: Most patients with pancreatic cancer show an inoperable locally advanced/ metastatic tumour at the time of diagnosis. The present study was aimed at determining the prognostic factors in patients with advanced pancreatic carcinoma treated with gemcitabine.

Material And Methods: Sixty-seven unresectable or metastatic pancreatic cancer patients treated with gemcitabine were included in the study and a total of 258 cycles of treatment were applied.

Results: The overall response rate was 5%. Thirty-one percent of the patients had stable disease, whereas progressive disease was seen in 49%. Clinical benefit response rate was 15%. The median duration of response was 7.3 months. Median progression-free survival was 3 months, while median overall survival was 9 months. Univariate analysis revealed that worse results were found in patients with performance status (PS) = 2, and in patients with primary tumour location in the body or tail of the pancreas (p<0.05). Multivariate analysis of data revealed that the most important factor was PS of the patient, as the patients with PS = 2 had worse results than the patients with PS = 0-1 (p<0.05).

Conclusions: Low PS is a negative predictive factor for the survival of patients with advanced pancreatic carcinoma treated with gemcitabine.