Central Pancreatectomy: A Center of Debate of Risk versus Benefit

Central Pancreatectomy (CP) is a parenchyma sparing operation, which involves segmental resection of the pancreas [1-4]. This is most appropriate to advocate in removal of benign and low-grade malignant lesions, arising from the neck and proximal body of the pancreas [4-13]. Such lesions would have traditionally required pancreaticoduodenectomy or distal pancreatectomy [4,6]. These procedures while oncologically sound, involves resection of considerable amount normal parenchyma. Recent literature however has frequent reports of CP being performed for such low grade or benign tumours [1-13]. CP, when compared to traditional resection, achieves significant sparing of normal pancreatic parenchyma and is believed to offer better preservation of pancreatic function with acceptable morbidity and mortality [3-7,12]. The debate however is, what are the benefits and long/short term complications of CP and does the benefit outweigh the risk?