Quality of Life of Recurrence-Free Patients After Pancreatoduodenectomy for Periampullary Cancer: A Statistical Comparison with Healthy People Without Surgery and Patients After Subtotal and Total Gastrectomy for Early Gastric Cancer

Summary

Quality of life (QOL) of recurrence-free patients after pancreatoduodenectomy (PD) for periampullary cancer was investigated employing nutritional parameters and QOL instruments to evaluate health- and non-health-related aspects of patients’The study focused on comparison of post-PD patients with a control group without surgery and with patients after subtotal and total gastrectomy performed for early gastric cancer, matching pairs according to age, gender, and date of surgery. The results suggested that the long-term, health-related QOL of patients after PD for advanced periampullary cancer would be the same as that of healthy people without surgery, somewhat better than that after subtotal gastrectomy for early gastric cancer, and much superior to that after total gastrectomy for early gastric cancer. Assessment of total life did not reveal any difference among the individual groups. The present study failed to advocate the advantage of the pylorus-preserving PD over the conventional PD (Whipple) in postoperative QOL of five closely matched pairs. A prospective randomized study with a larger sample is needed to clarify the rationale of pylorus preservation.