Management of necrotizing pancreatitis

Infection complicating pancreatic necrosis leads to persisting sepsis, multiple organ dysfunction syndrome and accounts for about half the deaths that occur following acute pancreatitis. Severe cases due to gallstones require urgent endoscopic sphincterotomy. Patients with pancreatic necrosis should be followed with serial contrast enhanced computed tomography (CE-CT) and if infection is suspected fine needle aspiration of the necrotic area for bacteriology (FNAB) should be undertaken. Treatment of sterile necrosis should initially be non-operative. In the presence of infection necrosectomy is indicated. Although traditionally this has been by open surgery, minimally invasive procedures are a promising new alternative. There are many unresolved issues in the management of pancreatic necrosis. These include, the use of antibiotic prophylaxis, the precise indications for and frequency of repeat CE-CT and FNAB,and the role of enteral feeding.

Adjuvant therapy in pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer remains one of the leading causes of cancer related death worldwide with an overall five-year survival of less than 5%. Potentially curative surgery, which alone can improve 5-year survival to 10%, is an option for only 10%-20% of patients at presentation owing to local invasion of the tumour or metastatic disease. Adjuvant chemotherapy has been shown to improve 5-year survival to 20%-25% but conflicting evidence remains with regards to chemoradiation. In this article we review the current evidence available from published randomised trials and discuss ongoing phase III trials in relation to adjuvant therapy in pancreatic cancer.

Adjuvant therapy in pancreatic cancer

The outlook for patients with pancreatic cancer has been grim. There have been major advances in the surgical treatment of pancreatic cancer, leading to a dramatic reduction in post-operative mortality from the development of high volume specialized centres. This stimulated the study of adjuvant and neoadjuvant treatments in pancreatic cancer including chemoradiotherapy and chemotherapy. Initial protocols have been based on the original but rather small GITSG study first reported in 1985. There have been two large European trials totalling over 600 patients (EORTC and ESPAC-1) that do not support the use of chemoradiation as adjuvant therapy. A second major finding from the ESPAC-1 trial (541 patients randomized) was some but not conclusive evidence for a survival benefit associated with chemotherapy. A third major finding from the ESPAC-1 trial was that the quality of life was not affected by the use of adjuvant treatments compared to surgery alone. The ESPAC-3 trial aims to assess the definitive use of adjuvant chemotherapy in a randomized controlled trial of 990 patients.

Pancreatic cancer–Adjuvant therapy

Pancreatic cancer ranks tenth in terms of newly diagnosed cases, but just 10%–15% of these patients can undergo resection. Survival after curative surgery is dismal, as recurrences occur either locally or in the liver. Adjuvant treatment with either chemotherapy or chemoradiation (with or without maintenance chemotherapy) has been employed, to improve the poor prognosis. Justification for the use of chemoradiation, with follow on chemotherapy, is based on the results of an underpowered 1987 GITSG study, which closed prematurely and compared intervention to observation. There has been no survival advantage demonstrated in the one randomized controlled trial that examined chemoradiation compared to chemotherapy. There is a clear cut survival advantage however with chemotherapy compared to observation, based on the results from two large randomized controlled trials, and supported by an individual patient data meta-analysis. The standard of care for adjuvant therapy based on level I evidence (from the ESPAC-1 trial) is post operative chemotherapy using 5-Fluorouracil with folinic acid providing a best estimate of 29% five years survival.

Multimodality standard of care treatment of resectable and borderline resectable pancreatic cancer

This retrospective single centre report of 36 patients with resectable pancreatic cancer who had neoadjuvant systemic chemotherapy,found that only 25(69%)of patients could undergo resection with a median overall survival of 34.4 months(1).They concluded that a short course of neoadjuvant chemotherapy without chemoradiation may improve patient selection prior to surgical resection(1).Whilst the notion that effective neoadjuvant therapy does not require chemoradiation is interesting this study demonstrates the weaknesses of retrospective studies.Progress in the treatment of pancreatic cancer has only taken place through well designed prospective randomized controlled trials.