[Adjuvant therapies in combination with pancreatectomy for carcinoma of the pancreas].

In the treatment of adenocarcinoma of the pancreas, surgical resection is the only curative strategy. However, the long-term survival rate after pancreatectomy remains poor, and most patients died of loco-regional and/or hepatic recurrence. Thus, we should perform effective adjuvant therapies in combination with surgery, in order to completely prevent these two types of cancer relapse. The present article is designed to introduce the recent reports on the adjuvant chemo-and/or radio-therapies for this cancer. As for loco-regional control, extended pancreatectomy plus chemoradiation seems to be most promising, and preoperative chemoradiation will be more popular in the near future. In order to decrease hepatic metastasis, our "2-channel chemotherapy", a continuous infusion of 5-FU via both hepatic artery and portal vein, is very promising. If postoperative survival is improved by combining these two types of regional therapy, the role of pancreatectomy will be enlarged and more widely understood in the near future.