title: Cancer of the pancreas. 50 years of surgery.
abstract: The course of 196 patients with proven carcinoma of the pancreas seen at Yale New Haven Hospital from 1972 to 1982 was analyzed. Only 73% of the patients were preoperatively expected to have cancer of the pancreas. The patients who underwent resection had the longest mean survival but also the longest total hospital stay. Twenty-seven patients survived 1 year or more, but nonresected patients constituted 81.5% of this group. The only 5-year survivor did not undergo resection. Forty-seven percent of patients who survived 1 year and had not undergone gastroduodenal bypass, developed duodenal obstruction. It was not possible to identify a subset of patients with a favorable prognosis. A review totaling approximately 37000 patients, of whom 4100 had undergone resections, revealed only 156 survivors, 12 of whom had not been resected, for an overall survival rate of only 0.4%. No author had more than 3.4% of the total number of patients as 5-year survivors.
authors.affiliation: Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Gudjonsson
mesh_terms: D000230:Adenocarcinoma / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000266:history / Q000401:mortality / Q000601:surgery*; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010190:Pancreatic Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000266:history / Q000401:mortality / Q000601:surgery*; D012189:Retrospective Studies