National Cancer Database Researchers find current treatment recommendations outdated

Analysis of data from the largest cancer database in the country has shown that a significant proportion of patients with operable pancreatic cancer are not being offered surgical treatment, even though an operation is the only potential cure for this type of cancer. Researchers from the National Cancer Database (NCDB) released their comments on this groundbreaking study that found that 38.2 percent of patients with early-stage pancreatic cancer were not offered a surgical procedure as a treatment.

"As surgeons, the message we have been sending for many years is that surgical treatment for early-stage pancreatic cancer can have a positive impact on survival and quality of life. This study suggests, however, that the percentage of patients who should have an operation but don't get it, is alarmingly high," according to Mark S. Talamonti, MD, FACS, chief of the division of surgical oncology, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, and co-researcher of the study.

Dr. Talamonti believes patients are not being offered an operation because of nihilism and skepticism on the part of medical professionals, including some surgeons, who question whether patients with pancreatic cancer can benefit from any treatment at all.

"For physicians who trained before the 1980s and 1990s when studies started to show some improvement in survival and quality of life from treatment for pancreatic cancer, the general idea was that there was no effective treatment for the disease. While this is a very formidable disease with considerable medical challenges, the reality is that not everybody has to die. Many patients do benefit by having the appropriate operation by sufficiently experienced surgeons in high-volume medical centers," Dr. Talamonti said.

"The pessimistic attitude toward pancreatic cancer and pancreatic cancer surgery is based on outdated data," explained Karl Bilimoria, MD, a research fellow at the American College of Surgeons (ACS) and Department of Surgery, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, focusing on surgical oncologic outcomes and lead author of the study. "Pancreatic cancer had terrible outcomes in the 1960s. The mortality and complications associated with surgical procedures for pancreatic cancer and the lack of effective systemic therapies made the short-term and long-term outlook for patients rather dismal. But there have been improvements over the last 30 to 40 years, to the point where postoperative mortality is less than 3 percent in many hospitals, and long-term survival rates are now about 30 percent after surgical resection for Stage I disease," Dr. Bilimoria added.

"We need to get the message out to the gatekeepers -- the primary care and internal medicine physicians, gastroenterologists, and medical oncologists who see these patients before they are referred to surgeons -- that it's better to operate than not to operate," Dr. Talamonti said.

Data for the study were obtained from the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB), which is maintained by the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer (CoC). The NCDB accounts for more than 75 percent of all cancers treated in the United States each year. The database includes information on more than 20 million patients with cancer who have been cared for at 1,440 hospitals in this country.

NCDB researchers examined data on 292,565 patients with pancreatic cancer. From 1995 to 2004, they studied 9,559 patients with Stage I disease who were potential candidates for an operation. Stage I pancreatic cancer is confined to the pancreas itself, and it typically occurs in 10 percent to 15 percent of patients initially diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, according to Dr. Bilimoria.

The study was supported by the American College of Surgeons Clinical Scholars in Residence program and a research grant from the Northwestern University Department of Surgery.

The American College of Surgeons is a scientific and educational organization of surgeons that was founded in 1913 to raise the standards of surgical practice and to improve the care of the surgical patient. The College is dedicated to the ethical and competent practice of surgery. Its achievements have significantly influenced the course of scientific surgery in America and have established it as an important advocate for all surgical patients. The College has more than 71,000 members and is the largest organization of surgeons in the world.

Source: American College of Surgeons

For more information: http://www.facs.org/