Radiation therapy: current role in pancreatic cancer

Abstract

The pancreatic cancer has a bad prognosis; its survival rate is of 5-15% at 5 years, in the best series, after a radical management. Its gradual evolution, in association with nonspecific symptoms, retards the diagnosis; for this reason just 15to 20%% of the lesions identified at this moments are resectable, the other 80% of the lesions in this period are part of locally advanced cancer (30%) or metastatic (50%), in these cases the radical surgery is not an alternative and requires a different therapeutic approach, to improve the quality of life and if possible, the survival rate. In response to this situation different therapeutic options have been investigated and implemented, depending of the stage of the lesion.

Chemotherapy was used as a unique regimen, then, the benefits of radiotherapy as a sole treatment was studied, but its efficacy in the survival of the patients wasn’t satisfactory. Therefore, the therapeutic tendency was directed toward the combination of these two approaches; however, there hasn’t being a meaningful rise in the survival of these patients.

As we can see, the therapeutic orientation in the locally advanced and postoperative pancreatic cancer, continued to be and issue in investigations, in order to find the best protocol that ensure a significant increase in the patient’s survival.