Introduction: Pancreatic cancer is malignancy with poor prognosis for quality of life and overall survival. The incidence is variant, 7.7/100,000 in Europe, 7.6/100,000 in the USA, 2.2/100.000 in Africa. The only real benefit for cure is surgery, duodenopancreatectomy. The key points for this procedure are radicality, low morbidity and low mortality, the follow up and the expected overall survival. The benchmark of the procedure is the pancreaticojejunoanastomosis, with its main pitfall, postoperative pancreatic fistula B or C. Subsequently, the manner of creation of pancreaticojejunoanastomosis defines the safety, thus the postoperative morbidity and mortality. Finally, this issue remarkably depends on the surgeon and the surgical technique creating the anastomosis. We used 2 techniques with interrupted sutures, dunking anastomosis and duct-to-mucosa double layer technique. The objective of the study was to compare these 2 suturing techniques we applied, and the aim was to reveal the risk benefit rationale for dunking either duct to mucosa anastomosis.
Material and method: In our last series of 25 patients suffering pancreatic head carcinoma we performed a standard dodenopancreatectomy. After the preoperative diagnosis and staging with US, CICT, tumor markers, they underwent surgery. Invagination-dunking anastomosis was performed in 15, whereas, duct-to-mucosa, double layer anastomosis was performed in 10. In the first group with dunking anastomosis, we had 6 patients with soft pancreas and 8 with narrow main pancreatic duct, less than 3 mm. In the duct-to-mucosa group there were 5 patients with soft pancreas and 4 with narrow main pancreatic duct. All other stages of surgery were unified, so the only difference in the procedure remained on the pancreatojejunoanastomosis. The onset of the postoperative pancreatic fistula was estimated with revelation of 3 fold serum level of alfa amylases from the third postoperative day in the drain liquid.
Results: In the duct to mucosa group there wasn’t a clinically relevant postoperative pancreatic fistula, while in the dunking anastomosis group we had 4 postoperative pancreatic fistula B, 26 %. One of these 4 patients experienced intraabdominal collection – abscess, conservatively managed with lavation through the drain. Comparing the groups, there was no significant difference between the groups concerning the appearance of postoperative pancreatic fistula: p>0.05, p=0.125. From all 25 patients, in 21 patients biliary stent was installed preoperatively to resolve the preoperative jaundice. All 21 suffered preoperative and postoperative reflux cholangitis, extending the intra-hospital stay.
Conclusion: So far, there have been many trials referring to opposite results while comparing these 2 techniques in creation of the pancreticojejunoanastomosis. In our study, the duct to mucosa anastomosis prevailed as a technique, proving its risk benefit rationale. However, further large randomized clinical studies have to be conducted to clarify which of these procedures would be the prime objective in the choice of the surgeon while creating pancreatojejunoanastomosis.
