Background and objective: Pancreatic cancer has the poorest prognosis of any common gastrointestinal malignancy, with a 5-year overall survival of less than 5%. A better knowledge of prognostic factors related to this neoplasia might help improve the survival of these patients. We evaluated the prognostic significance of different factors in both overall survival and tumor recurrence in patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma who had undergone pancreatic resection with curative intent.
Patients and method: All patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma submitted to surgical resection in our unit from January 1995 to February 2005 were evaluated. Twenty-three pre-surgical, therapeutic, and histopathologic variables were analyzed. Univariate (Kaplan-Meier, log-rank test) and multivariate (Cox regression) analyses were performed to select independent prognostic factors.
Results: Ninety-four patients were evaluated. The median age of patients was 63 years and 53% were woman. The probability of overall survival was 63% at 1 year, 18% at 3 years, and 8% at 5 years, with a median survival of 18 months. Univariate analysis identified performance of adjuvant therapy, histologic grade, percentage of involved-resected lymph nodes, pathologic N stage, and pathologic TNM stage as variables associated with overall survival. On the other hand, the probability of tumor recurrence was 52% at 1 year, 83% at 3 years, and 91% at 5 years, with a median time to tumor recurrence of 12 months. Predictive variables of tumor recurrence in the univariate analysis were preoperative N stage, preoperative TNM stage, postoperative CA 19.9 serum concentration, histological grade, percentage of involved-resected lymph nodes, pathologic N stage and pathologic TNM stage. Multivariate analysis identified histological grade and pathologic N stage as independent predictive factors of both overall survival (histologic grade: HR=2.341 [CI 95%, 1.342-4.098; p=0.003]; pathologic N stage: HR=2.242 [1.213-4.149; p=0.01]) and tumor recurrence (histological grade: HR=1.742 [CI 95%, 1.121-3.086; p=0.05]; pathologic N stage: HR=2.096 [1.089-4.032; p=0.027]).
Conclusions: The histological grade and pathologic N stage predict the prognosis of patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma after surgical resection.