Adjuvant therapy in operable pancreatic cancer.

Adenocarcinoma of the pancreas remains a highly lethal disease with one of the worst mean survival rates of all solid malignancies. Even with improvements in surgical techniques in the last decades, the five-year survival rate of patients following resection is still under 20 percent. Various additional treatment concepts have been introduced based on encouraging results for adjuvant chemoradiotherapy obtained in a small randomized-controlled trial more than 15 years ago. The purpose of this article is to review the results of several trials investigating adjuvant therapy for pancreatic cancer. We will discuss recent studies of EORTC (European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer), ESPAC (European Study Group for Pancreatic Cancer) and others and will also focus on future alternative treatment options for pancreatic cancer.