Role of surgery in the treatment of bilio-pancreatic cancer. The European experience

Pancreatic cancer is the eighth most common cancer in Europe, accounting for 4.1% of cancer deaths in men and 4.8% in women. Standardized pancreatoduodenectomy and left pancreatectomy are the gold standard for routine surgical treatment of pancreatic cancer. Total pancreatectomy should be reserved for positive pancreatic resection margins or severe pancreatic anastomotic leak; mesenterico-portal vein resection should be performed only when it is the only reasonable way to obtain clear margins. Extended lymphadenectomies are recommended only in prospective, randomized studies. Ongoing efforts to standardize surgical procedures will facilitate comparison of selection criteria and trial data among different centers, and will also optimize the study design of ongoing/planned prospective trials using adjuvant and neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy in pancreatic cancer.