Modified standard pancreaticoduodenectomy for the treatment of pancreatic head cancer

Since 1980 extended surgery has been used to treat pancreatic cancer in man y institutions in Japan in the hope of achieving curative resection and a g ood outcome. The resection rate increased, but the final outcome was unsati sfactory, and the question of postoperative quality of life (QOL) following extended surgery has instead become the central issue. During the past 22 years (October 1976 to June 1998) 169 of the 188 patients with invasive pan creatic ductal carcinoma at Mie University Hospital were treated surgically . A standard operation was performed in the early period (October 1976 to A pril 1981, n = 34), an extended operation was performed in the middle perio d (May 1981 to March 1993, n = 100), and a modified standard operation was performed in the late period (April 1993 to June 1998, n = 35). 'Standard o peration' means pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD) with D1 lymph node dissection (regional), and 'extended operation' means PD with D2-D3 lymph node dissect ion. Our 'modified standard operation' consists of PD with lymph node disse ction limited to the anterior pancreaticoduodenal (APD), posterior pancreat icoduodenal (PPD), pyloric (PY), hepatoduodenal ligament (HDL), common hepa tic artery (CH) and right half of the superior mesenteric (SM) nodes. Thus, the extent of lymph node dissection in the modified standard procedure lie s between the level in the standard and extended procedure, but the PD is t he same, with only slight modification in the reconstruction procedure. We consider the standard operation to be a less curative procedure and the ext ended operation to be a very stressful procedure and accordingly we have mo dified it (modified standard operation) in our recent cases out of consider ation for patients' QOL. We found that postoperative QOL and survival were much better in the late period than in the early and middle periods.