Selection of Optimal Adjuvant Chemotherapeutic Agents for Pancreatic Cancer Treatment / 대한내과학회지

ABSTRACT

Pancreatic cancer generally has a dismal prognosis, with a 5-year overall survival rate of approximately 10%. At present, surgical resection is the only treatment with a curative aim; however, it is applicable to only 15–20% patients with pancreatic cancer at the time of diagnosis and the median survival following treatment with surgery alone is only 11–20 months. Many trials have shown that adjuvant chemotherapy offers improved outcomes over observation following surgical resection. Recently, modified folinic acid–fluorouracil–irinotecan–oxaliplatin (FOLFIRINOX) treatment following surgical resection in patients with good performance status has shown an impressive 9-month increase in disease-free survival. However, patients included in the study were selected based on a narrow set of criteria, and adverse events during adjuvant chemotherapy remain a limitation. In this article, we review some key trials of adjuvant chemotherapy treatment for pancreatic cancer and discuss future perspectives including neoadjuvant treatment approaches.