Intra-Arterial Chemotherapy for Patients with Inoperable Carcinoma of the Pancreas

Carcinoma of the periampullary region: A review of a personal series of 87 patients

“…In addition, 10 patients had intra-arterial chemotherapy, primarily for the relief of pain after the initial treatment, for periods of 3-4 months, usinga technique modified from that described by Gazet (1974) and Gazet and Smith (1974).…”

Intra-Arterial Infusion Chemotherapy With Angiotensin-II for Locally Advanced and Nonresectable Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma: Further Evaluation and Prognostic Implications

“…In reviewing the previous reports, the median survival period was Յ6 months, [3][4][5] which is still shorter than the 8 to 12 months resulting from a combination with radiotherapy. 9 -11 Although a few authors have treated this cancer by the conventional type of intra-arterial chemotherapy, [12][13][14][15][16] their patients' median survival periods did not exceed 7 months. Adenocarcinoma of the pancreas forms a poorly vascularized tumor, 17 and thus, even when a high dose of cytotoxic drug is introduced into either the systemic circulation or the pancreas-supplying arteries, only a small amount of drug actually reaches the cancer tissues.…”

“…23 There have been very few reports of systemic chemotherapy in which the median survival period exceeded 12 months. In addition, considering that median survival periods were reported to be approximately 6 to 7 months in the systemic or traditional types of intraarterial chemotherapies for pancreatic cancer, 1,2,7,8,[12][13][14][15][16] the prognostic benefit observed herein would have been attributed to the hemodynamic effect of AT-II rather than to drug sensitivity.…”