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©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Dec 28, 2015; 21(48): 13574-13581
Published online Dec 28, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i48.13574
Published online Dec 28, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i48.13574
Rare long-term survivors of pancreatic adenocarcinoma without curative resection
Stephen Y Oh, Alicia Edwards, Richard A Kozarek, Digestive Disease Institute, Virginia Mason Medical Center, Seattle, WA 98101, United States
Margaret T Mandelson, Cancer Institute, Virginia Mason Medical Center, Seattle, WA 98101, United States
Bruce Lin, Vincent J Picozzi, Department of Medical Oncology, Virginia Mason Medical Center, Seattle, WA 98101, United States
Russell Dorer, Department of Pathology, Virginia Mason Medical Center, Seattle, WA 98101, United States
W Scott Helton, Department of General Surgery, Virginia Mason Medical Center, Seattle, WA 98101, United States
Author contributions: Oh SY collected data, performed analysis and wrote the manuscript; Edwards A and Mandelson MT collected data and performed analysis; Dorer R re-reviewed the pathology slides of all patients included in the study; Helton WS re-reviewed the staging CT on all patients included in the study, supervised data analysis and edited the manuscript; Kozarek RA and Picozzi VJ designed the study, supervised data analysis and edited the manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Virginia Mason Medical Center Institutional Review Board (IRB). Informed consent from individual patients was not required by the IRB given the nature of the study (retrospective review of medical records) and the lack of identifiable patient information in the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Stephen Y Oh, MD, Digestive Disease Institute, Virginia Mason Medical Center, 1100 9th Ave., MS: C3-GAS, Seattle, WA 98101, United States. oys801202@gmail.com
Telephone: +1-206-2232319 Fax: +1-206-2236379
Received: June 30, 2015
Peer-review started: July 4, 2015
First decision: July 19, 2015
Revised: August 11, 2015
Accepted: September 28, 2015
Article in press: September 30, 2015
Published online: December 28, 2015
Processing time: 177 Days and 6.4 Hours
Peer-review started: July 4, 2015
First decision: July 19, 2015
Revised: August 11, 2015
Accepted: September 28, 2015
Article in press: September 30, 2015
Published online: December 28, 2015
Processing time: 177 Days and 6.4 Hours
Core Tip
Core tip: Five-year survival in patients with pancreatic cancer without curative resection is rare and has not been well described in the literature. At our institution from 1995 to 2009, non-resected ≥ 5-year survivors represented 2% (11/544) of all non-resected patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma, and 11% (11/98) of ≥ 5-year survivors. These patients were mostly younger than 70 years of age, had excellent performance status and responded favorably to chemotherapy but suffered significant morbidities such as biliary sepsis. We speculate that tumor biology and host immunity play important roles on disease progression and survival.