Twelve-year survival after the diagnosis of locally advanced carcinoma of the pancreas: A case report

Abstract

The long-term survival rate of patients with carcinoma of the pancreas is low. Even more so, long-term survival of patients with metastatic pancreatic carcinoma is extremely rare. In this case report, we describe a patient with an unusual course of disease. This patient was diagnosed with locoregional carcinoma of the pancreas and therefore underwent gastroenterostomy and cholecystojeojenostomy without resection of the primary tumor. Later he was treated with radiotherapy and chemotherapy and survived 12 years, during 11 of which he had no evidence of disease. He died 12 years after the initial diagnosis from peritoneal dissemination of poorly differentiated carcinoma complicated with obstructive jaundice and sepsis. To our knowledge, this patient had the longest reported survival with locally advanced pancreas carcinoma that was not resected. The case is presented and discussed in this article.

Selection of extreme phenotypes: the role of clinical observation in translational research

“…Nonetheless, clinical experience shows that exceptions exist even among the malignancies presenting the direst prognosis, and every oncologist treats patients that are unexpectedly cured or that live far beyond their estimated prognosis. Even though many of those cases are not published, some reports of long-term survivors of apparently incurable tumours such as pancreatic cancer [41, 42], gastric cancer [43–46], colon cancer [47], small [48, 49] and non-small-cell lung cancer [50, 51] or multiple myeloma [52] can be found in the medical literature. Assuming that the diagnostic and staging work-up has been correctly performed, these individuals may represent extreme phenotypes worthy of detailed study.…”

The role of extreme phenotype selection studies in the identification of clinically relevant genotypes in cancer research

“…A limited number of case reports on long-term survivors of diseases such as gastric carcinoma, [13][14][15] colon carcinoma, 16 pancreatic carcinoma, 17 or melanoma 18 in apparently incurable form can be found in the literature. Interestingly, the strategy of studying groups of patients with malignant disease who are long-term survivors has been employed in the past in some trials, for example, in patients with nonsmall cell lung carcinoma, 19 -21 although those studies focused on the identification of clinical prognostic factors rather than genetic factors.…”