A new risk score can help predict which pancreatic cancer survivors are more likely to suffer a recurrence of their cancer, researchers said.
The score could help better manage the follow-up care for patients who’ve had pancreatic tumors surgically removed, and whose cancers have not spread to their lymph nodes, researchers wrote Dec. 17 in JAMA Surgery.
“We now have a way to identify patients whose higher risk of recurrence may have been previously overlooked,” senior researcher Dr. Cristina Ferrone, chair of surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said in a news release. “This gives us the opportunity to change the way we care for this patient population in a meaningful way.”
The score helps people with pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors, which are a less common and typically less aggressive form of pancreatic cancer.
Patients whose cancer has not spread outside the pancreas, to either the lymph nodes or surrounding organs, have a 91% five-year survival rate following surgery, researchers said in background notes.
For the new study, researchers analyzed data from 770 pancreatic cancer patients across five major hospitals.
Results showed about 10% of patients whose cancer hasn’t spread to the lymph nodes will nonetheless experience a recurrence of the cancer, most often in their liver.
With this data, researchers developed a 13-point risk score that relies on four key factors that increase the odds of recurrence:
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Male sex
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A tumor size of 3 centimeters or larger
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A cancer grade of 2 or higher
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Invasion of cancer cells into the bloodstream or lymphatic fluid
This score will allow doctors to place patients into low-, moderate- and high-risk groups, and then monitor their progress accordingly.
“The current guidelines leave clinicians with a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, but it’s clear from our research that not all patients require the same intensity of surveillance,” Ferrone said. “The results address a critical gap in current practice and will hopefully influence future guideline development for well-managed, individualized and cost-effective care.”