Pancreatic Resection as Part of Cytoreductive Surgery in Advanced-stage and Recurrent Epithelial Ovarian Cancer (Romania)

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 Patients and Methods

After obtaining the Ethics Committee approval (No. 43/2015) we retrospectively reviewed data of patients submitted to surgery for advanced stage or recurrent ovarian cancer at the Dan Setlacec Center of Gastrointestinal Disease and Liver Transplantation, Fundeni Clinical Institute, Romania, between January 2002 and May 2014 and found six cases eligible for the study: one case who was submitted to pancreatic resection at the moment of primary cytoreduction, four cases submitted to pancreatic surgery as part of secondary cytoreduction and another patient submitted to pancreatic surgery during tertiary cytoreduction......
 

Conclusion

Pancreatic resections can and should be performed as part of cytoreductive surgery for patients with advanced-stage or relapsed ovarian cancer. Although pancreatic fistula is a common complication after this type of surgery, this fact should not be transformed into a contraindication for pancreatic surgery in the context of advanced gynecological malignancies, a good understanding of this complication being mandatory in order to treat it successfully with minimal impact on the postoperative outcomes. Once the pancreatic fistula is assessed, the patient can be safely submitted to adjuvant chemotherapy to maximize the benefits provided by complete surgical cytoreduction.