Is there a role for arterial reconstruction in surgery for pancreatic cancer?

Surgery remains the only potentially curative treatment for patients with pancreatic cancer. Locally advanced pancreatic cancer with vascular involvement remains a surgical challenge because high perioperative risk and the uncertainty of a survival benefit. Whilst portal vein resection has started to gather momentum because the perioperative morbidity and long term survival is comparable to standard pancreatectomy, there isn't yet a consensus on arterial resections. There have been various reports and case series of arterial resections in pancreatic cancer, with mixed survival results. Mollberg et al have appraised the heterogeneous published literature available on arterial resection in pancreatic cancer in an attempt to compare this to standard pancreatectomy. In this article, we discuss the results of this systematic review and meta-analysis, and the limitations associated with analysing results from heterogenous data. We have outlined the important features in surgery for pancreatic cancer and specifically to arterial resections, and compared arterial resections to the published literature on venous resections.