ABSTRACT
Survival after surgery of pancreas carcinoma is still poor. Despite an apparently curative resection, tumor rapidly recur. Thus, the arsenal of diagnostic means should be enriched by sensitive methods to detect the minimal residual disease. The frequency of micrometastases in corresponding paraortic lymph nodes after an apparently curative operation was detected using routine histological, immunohistological and polymerase chain reaction for mutated K-ras methods. Tumor tissue was used for the control. 3 cases out of 69 revealed a positive tumor histological reaction, and 5--immunohistological staining. K-ras mutations are detected in 42 (61%) patients, 12 (17%) of those revealed a positive tumor reaction. Only one patient of a control group showed K-ras mutation. All K-ras positive patients revealed a poor survival prognosis and had a tumor relapse after resection.
