Surrogate Markers of Resectability in Patients Undergoing Exploration of Potentially Resectable Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma

Despite extensive preoperative staging, a significant number of pancreatic cancers are unresectable at surgical exploration. Patients undergoing pancreatic exploration with a view to resection were studied and comparisons are then made between those undergoing resection and a bypass procedure to identify surrogate markers of unresectability. One hundred thirteen consecutive patients underwent pancreatic exploration for head-of-pancreas (HOP) adenocarcinoma with curative intent. Fifty-five underwent pancreaticoduodenectomy and 58 underwent a bypass procedure. Student’s t test, receiver operator characteristics (ROC) and logistic regression were used to compare the predictive value of preoperative patient variables collected retrospectively. The bypass group had a significantly higher median CA19.9 than the resection group (P = 0.003). Platelet count and neutrophil–lymphocyte ratio (NLR) were also significantly different (P = 0.013 and P = 0.026, respectively). ROC analysis indicated that age ≤65, platelet count >297 × 10⁹/l, CA19.9 ≤473 Ku/l, and CA19.9–bilirubin ratio were predictive variables for resectable disease. NLR and CA19.9–bilirubin ratio had specificity values of 92.9 and 97.0%, respectively. From logistic regression, a raised CA19.9 was found to be an independent risk factor for unresectable disease (P = 0.031). A significant proportion of patients with HOP adenocarcinoma are understaged preoperatively. Preoperative serology including platelet count, NLR, CA19.9, and CA19.9–bilirubin ratio may be used as additional discriminators of resectability particularly for high-risk patients.