Progress in clinical research of pancreatic cancer: from "resection" to "cure"

Abstract

Because of the high malignancy of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, the cancer-related mortality of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is increasing year by year. Despite advance in surgical techniques, the 5-year survival rate of patients after resection is still less than 30%. Recent studies have found that pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is a systemic disease, which may not be cured completely by up-front resection, but requires perioperative multidisciplinary therapy. With the concept of "potentially curable pancreatic cancer" , clinicians need to evaluate the resectability of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma accurately before operation, and use the innovative multidisciplinary therapy including neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy,surgery and adjuvant chemoradiotherapy to improve the R0 resection rate and reduce the risk of early metastasis. Therefore, the therapeutic goal of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is no longer "simple resection" , but long survival through perioperative multidisciplinary treatment. In this article, we briefly introduce the progress of resectability assessment, surgical techniques and perioperative adjuvant therapy of "potentially curable pancreatic cancer" .