Portal Vein Resection: How Much Could It Be Resected?

The survival rates of pancreatic cancers which are known one of the deadly cancers are still about 5%. the only curative treatment option is surgery despite advances in radio and chemotherapy. however, only 20% of patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer can be surgically removed. primary reason for this is anatomic location of pancreas whose cancers could easily invade major vascular structures such as portal vein. aggressive surgical procedures, including portal vein resection have been developed in order to increase the number of patients which can be operated. although some centers perform routine implementation of portal vein resection, there are still controversial issues, when and how much portal vein can be resected. in this article we tried to find out how portal vein resection and reconstruction can influence the effect of long-term survival in pancreas cancer. in this study, the three cases whose histopathological data and demographic data are similar are elected between 29 patients performed panreaticodudenectomy and portal vein resection. these cases of portal vein resection and reconstruction have been applied with varying degrees. although a 3-year survival was obtained in the first two cases by short segment portal vein resection and reconstruction, the last case died due to metastatic diseases after eight months. according to literature, factors that influence survival in pancreatic cancer are extra-pancreatic disease, lymph node involvement and vascular structures. also the length of portal vein invasion should be included into these factors