Definition of Local Recurrence Site in Resected Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma: A Multicenter Study (DOLORES-1)

Abstract

Simple SummaryPancreatic cancer remains a disease with a dismal outlook for patients, with high relapse rates after surgery and adjuvant treatments. Thanks to the high conformality achievable with advanced radiotherapy techniques, a more robust definition of clinical target volume (CTV) margins is mandatory. Moreover, a precise CTV definition may affect local control, minimizing radiation-related toxicity and allowing dose escalation. Contrary to two recent studies, RTOG contouring guidelines are not based on a pattern of failure analysis. We provided a local failure risk map in resected pancreatic cancer, validating the results of previous studies. Moreover, according to a new probabilistic approach, we provided new CTV contouring guidelines for the postoperative radiotherapy of pancreatic cancer, modeling targets’ margins on a combination of our validated local failure map (30% of local failures) and RTOG guidelines (70% of local failures).The study aimed to generate a local failure (LF) risk map in resected pancreatic cancer (PC) and validate the results of previous studies, proposing new guidelines for PC postoperative radiotherapy clinical target volume (CTV) delineation. Follow-up computer tomography (CT) of resected PC was retrospectively reviewed by two radiologists identifying LFs and plotting them on a representative patient CT scan. The percentages of LF points randomly extracted based on CTV following the RTOG guidelines and based on the LF database were 70% and 30%, respectively. According to the Kernel density estimation, an LF 3D distribution map was generated and compared with the results of previous studies using a Dice index. Among the 64 resected patients, 59.4% underwent adjuvant treatment. LFs closer to the root of the celiac axis (CA) or the superior mesenteric artery (SMA) were reported in 32.8% and 67.2% cases, respectively. The mean (± standard deviation) distances of LF points to CA and SMA were 21.5 ± 17.9 mm and 21.6 ± 12.1 mm, respectively. The Dice values comparing our iso-level risk maps corresponding to 80% and 90% of the LF probabilistic density and the CTVs-80 and CTVs-90 of previous publications were 0.45–0.53 and 0.58–0.60, respectively. According to the Kernel density approach, a validated LF map was proposed, modeling a new adjuvant CTV based on a PC pattern of failure.