title: Pancreatic cancer: management and survival.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To review the management and survival from all pancreatic cancer over a 5-year period at a tertiary referral hospital in New Zealand and to examine similar outcome data from the national cancer registry.
  
  
  METHODS
  A retrospective audit was conducted for the 5-year period 1994-99 of patients discharged from Christchurch Hospital (Christchurch, New Zealand) and all patients in the New Zealand Cancer Registry with a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Kaplan- Meier survival curves were used for analysis.
  
  
  RESULTS
  From Christchurch Hospital a total of 230 patients were identified with a discharge diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Medium survival for all groups was 3.9 months. There was a median survival of 1.6 months for the non-interventional group, 3.1 months for the stent group, 6.2 months for the bypass group and 12.6 months for the pancreatico-duodenectomy group. These data are very similar to the New Zealand National Cancer Registry data, where the overall median survival was 3.1 months and median survival for a pancreatico-duodenectomy was 13.9 months.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A pancreatico-duodenectomy is usually a palliative surgical technique and not a curative procedure. Those selected for resection have been shown to have an advantage over operative bypass in terms of length of survival, however, this most likely reflects selection bias.
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, Christchurch Hospital, Christchurch, New Zealand. c.wakeman@clear.net.nz
authors.forename: Christopher J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Wakeman
authors.forename: Ian G
authors.initials: IG
authors.lastname: Martin
authors.forename: Robert W
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: Robertson
authors.forename: Bruce R
authors.initials: BR
authors.lastname: Dobbs
authors.forename: Frank A
authors.initials: FA
authors.lastname: Frizelle
mesh_terms: D000230:Adenocarcinoma / Q000401:mortality / Q000601:surgery / Q000628:therapy; D000368:Aged; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002760:Cholangiopancreatography, Endoscopic Retrograde; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009520:New Zealand / Q000453:epidemiology; D010166:Palliative Care; D010190:Pancreatic Neoplasms / Q000401:mortality* / Q000601:surgery* / Q000628:therapy; D016577:Pancreaticoduodenectomy; D012042:Registries / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D015607:Stents; D016019:Survival Analysis; D015996:Survival Rate; D013997:Time Factors