A comparative study of neoadjuvant treatment with gemcitabine plus nab-paclitaxel versus surgery first for pancreatic adenocarcinoma

Abstract Introduction Neoadjuvant treatment has been reported to prolong survival in patients with potentially resectable pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PA). However, there are currently limited clinical results available using nab-paclitaxel and gemcitabine in PA. This paper compares the oncological results of patients affected by potentially resectable PA who underwent surgery first (SF) versus surgery following neoadjuvant treatment (NAT). Methods This is an observational, comparative study whereby data were abstracted from a prospective database of patients affected by PA from 2007 to 2016. Results We included a total of 81 patients (36 SF and 45 NAT) which resulted in being preoperatively similar. Among the NAT patients, treatment was well tolerated and the resection rate was 68.8% (31/45 patients). There was a trend towards a higher R1 resection rate in the SF group compared with the NAT (13.8% vs 3.2%; p = 0.1). Median overall survival in the resected NAT group was higher (30.6 vs 22.1 months; p = 0.04). In the borderline resectable group, overall survival was found to be four times higher compared with SF (43.6 versus 13.5 months; p = 0.001). Conclusions These data suggest that neoadjuvant treatment with gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel is a safe and effective option for potentially resectable PA compared with the SF approach.