Incidence of postoperative pancreatic fistula after using a defined pancreaticojejunostomy technique for laparoscopic pancreaticoduodenectomy: A prospective multicenter study on 1033 patients.

Objective: This prospective multicenter study aimed to study the incidence of postoperative pancreatice fistula using a defined technique of pancreaticojejunostomy (PJ) in laparoscopic pancreaticoduodenectomy (LPD).

Background: PJ is a technically challenging and time-consuming procedure in LPD. Up to now, only a few small sample size studies have been reported on various PJ techniques in LPD, none of which has widely been accepted by surgeons.

Methods: This prospective study enrolled consecutive patients who underwent LPD using a defined technique of PJ at four institutions in China between January 2017 and December 2020.

Results: Of 1045 patients, after excluding 12 patients (1.2%) due to conversion to open surgery, 1033 patients were analysed. The males comprised of 57.12% (590/1033), and females 42.88% (443/1033), with a mean age of 59.00 years. The mean ± s.d. operation time was (270.2 ± 101.8) min. The median time for PJ was 24min (IQR = 20.0-30.0). The overall incidence of postoperative pancreatic fistula was 12.6%, including 67 patients (6.5%) with Grade A biochemical leak, 50 patients (4.8%) with Grade B, and 13 patients (1.3%) with Grade C pancreatic fistulas. The overall incidence of major complications (Clavien-Dindo score ≥3) was 6.3% and the 30-day mortality was 2.8%.

Conclusion: The pancreaticojejunostomy technique for LPD was safe, simple and reproduceable with favorable clinical outcomes. However, further validations using high-quality RCTs are still required to confirm the findings of this study.