Curative resection of pancreatic adenocarcinoma with major venous resection/repair is safe procedure but will not improve survival.

Objective: To evaluate the safety and survival benefit of combined curative resection (CR) of the pancreas and major venous resection in the management of borderline resectable pancreatic adenocarcinoma.

Methods: In this IRB approved retrospective cohort study, patients who had pancreatic surgery (n=274) between 1998-2012 were reviewed. One hundred and seventy-five patients had malignant causes, of which 119 underwent CR. One hundred and two patients who did not require venous resection/repair (Group-I) were compared with 17 patients who had major vascular involvement (portal-vein/superior-mesenteric-vein) and underwent a vascular resection/repair (Group-II) during the CR. Demographics, operative and follow-up data were reviewed.

Result: Type of the operations were: standard Whipple (n=53), pylorus-sparing-Whipple (n=41), total pancreatectomy (n=11), and distal pancreatectomy (n=13). In Group-II, venous involvement was excised and primarily repaired (n=12), or repaired using other veins (n=4) or a synthetic patch (n=1). Group-II had a significantly larger tumor size and more perineural invasion and peripancreatic soft tissue involvement (P<0.05). While complication rate, margin status, and duration of stay were not different between the groups, the median-overall-survival was higher for Group-I (15.34 months) than Group-II patients (7.18 months) (P=0.003).

Conclusion: Pancreatic CR requiring intra-operative venous resection/repair is feasible and safe, but the survival of the patients who have pancreatic adenocarcinoma with venous involvement is poor irrespective of a successful venous resection.