Abstract
BACKGROUND: Though nowadays a palliative pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD) can be performed safely with relatively low mortality and acceptable morbidity rates in experienced centers, there have been no studies on the routine use of a palliative PD or on the advantages of performing surgical resection as a debulking procedure. Furthermore, the impact of resection margins on survival outcomes has been a matter of controversy. Therefore, this study aimed to clarify the role of robotic PD (RPD) in pancreatic and periampullary adenocarcinomas with positive resection margins. METHODS: Patients undergoing RPDs and open PDs (OPDs) were included in this study. Based on the resection margins, the patients were divided into the R0, R1, and R2 PD groups. Surgical risks and survival outcomes were analyzed. RESULTS: There were 348 PDs, including 29 (8.3%) palliative and 319 (91.7%) curative. Primary tumor origin, tumor sizes, perineural invasions, and abnormal serum carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) levels were factors leading to palliative resection. The multivariate analysis showed that only pancreatic head adenocarcinomas and abnormal serum CEA levels (>5 ng/mL) were independent predictors. The surgical risks between curative and palliative PD were similar. There were no significant differences in the surgical risks and other surgical parameters between palliative RPDs and OPDs. For curative resection, RPDs resulted in less blood loss, greater harvested lymph nodes yield, less postoperative complications, less delayed gastric emptying, and shorter hospital stays than OPDs. The survival outcome was significantly better following R0 resection in overall periampullary adenocarcinomas, whereas a significant survival difference was shown only between the R0 and R2 resections for pancreatic head adenocarcinomas. CONCLUSION: Compared with R0 PDs, palliative R1 PDs could benefit patients with pancreatic head adenocarcinomas when considering survival outcomes without increasing surgical risks. RPD can be considered for curative purposes and as an alternative for palliative management.