The Importance of Resection Margin Status in Pancreatic Surgery
The following study was recently published in the British Journal of Surgery and below is a summary of the article.
Validation of at least 1 mm as cut‐off for resection margins for pancreatic adenocarcinoma of the body and tail.
Hank, T., Hinz, U., Tarantino, I., et al.
One of the major goals of surgical resection of a pancreatic tumor is to clear the body of all local disease. A resection margin is the outer edge of the tissue that was removed. The margins of the resected specimen are reviewed by the pathologists and should ideally be free of disease. Traditionally, R0 represents no cancer at the margins, while R1 represents microscopic disease at the margin, and R2 is representative of gross disease at the margins (seen by naked eye). In recent times, the topic of an R0 resection with disease located within 1mm of the margin has gained interest in the surgical community.
Using an institutional database, the authors identified 455 patients and classified resection status as either R0, R1 less than 1 mm, and R1 direct.
Median survival (time from surgery to death)
- R0: 62.4 months
- R1< 1mm from margin: 24.6 months
- R1 direct: 17.2 months
Postoperative chemotherapy group median survival
- R0: 68.6 months
- R1< 1mm from margin: 32.8 months
- R1 direct: 21.4 months
An important aspect of the study was that the authors not only analyzed the survival rates of all patients but also studied trends of survival in patients who received postoperative chemotherapy. Since postoperative chemotherapy is known to be related with survival, the authors wanted to demonstrate that margin status was independently associated with improved survival.
The results of the study confirm the importance of resection margin as they independently predicted survival in these patients regardless of their postoperative chemotherapy status. In particular, the survival benefit of clean resection margins beyond 1mm are highlighted. The differences observed in all reported median survivals were statistically significant.
Note: published data suggests that the same findings hold true for Whipple procedures. In short, R0 resections are associated with improved survival of all pancreatic adenocarcinomas, regardless of pancreatic surgery type.
You can read the entire article here.
Summary by: Michael J. Wright, Department of Surgery, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
