Patients With Intraductal Papillary Neoplasm Benefit From Adjuvant Therapy

Patients with invasive intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm (IPMN) may experience less pain than those with conventional pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), and may benefit from adjuvant therapy, according to a recent study published online ahead of print in Cancer.¹

Matthew McMillan, BA, and fellow researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia, looked at 1220 patients with resected invasive IPMN and conventional PDAC in order to compare treatment outcomes of adjuvant therapy and surgery alone.

Upon Cox modeling, surgery alone was found to be associated with worse overall survival as well as American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) TNM stage 3/4 disease, positive lymph node status, positive margins, and poor tumor differentiation.

When Cox modeling was stratified for those same patient characteristics, they found that adjuvant therapy was associated with improved overall survival. They found no survival advantage from adjuvant therapy for patients who had AJCC TNM stage 1 or lymph node-negative disease.

Patients who were identified as having invasive IPMN were found to have improved risk-adjusted overall survival compared to those who had PDAC.

Reference

1. McMillan MT, Lewis RS, Drebin JA, et al. The efficacy of adjuvant therapy for pancreatic invasive intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm (IPMN) [published online ahead of print November 20, 2015]. Cancer. doi: 10.1002/cncr.29803.