Contemporary Surgical, Oncological, and Survival Outcomes of Pancreaticoduodenectomy for Periampullary Tumours: a 5-Year Experience from Tertiary Cancer Center

With advances in surgical management of pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD), mortality rate for PD has been reported to be less than 5%. Postoperative pancreatic fistula (POPF) remains a major complication and morbidity after PD with incidence of up to 40%. This is a retrospective analysis of patients who underwent PD in a tertiary cancer referral center in southern India. Data was collected for the patients operated during the period from Jan 2014 to Dec 2018. Surgicopathological, oncological, and survival outcomes were described. Of 76 patients presumed as operable, 16 were excluded and data analyzed for 60 patients. Forty-four percent underwent classical Whipple’s PD and 56% pylorus-preserving PD. The most common postoperative complications were wound infection (25%); pneumonia (20%); clinically relevant POPF (13%); and delayed gastric emptying (19%). Thirty-day in-hospital mortality was 5%, 90-day mortality was 8.3%, and fistula-related mortality was 1.6%. Ampullary cancer was the most common histology. Three-year survival rate was 23.3% with a mean overall survival of 33.2 months with significantly better survival in the node negative than positive group (41.3 vs 20.5 months, P = 0.003) and significantly lower survival in pancreatic head cancer than other tumor histologies (16.6 vs 37.3 months, P = 0.002). Multivariate analysis has shown pancreatic head histology (HR = 2.38, 95% CI (1.08–5.26), P = 0.033) and nodal positivity (HR = 2.38, 95% CI (1.27–4.44), P = 0.007) as poor prognostic factors. Pancreaticoduodenectomy is a safe operation in experienced hands. Adhering to a meticulous adaptable reproducible anastomotic technique with standard perioperative management strategies significantly decreases the operative morbidity and mortality.