REVIEW   Free access

Minerva Surgery 2025 April;80(2):138-49

DOI: 10.23736/S2724-5691.25.10527-3

Copyright © 2025 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Pancreatic cancer resection in the elderly: state of the art, and future challenges. A systematic review

Carlo INGALDI ^{1, 2}, Margherita MINGHETTI ^{1, 2}, Vincenzo D’AMBRA ^{1, 2}, Claudio RICCI ^{1, 2}, Laura ALBERICI ^{1, 2}, Riccardo CASADEI ^{1, 2} ✉

¹ Division of Pancreatic Surgery, IRCCS University Hospital of Bologna, Bologna, Italy; ² Department of Internal Medicine and Surgery (DIMEC), Alma Mater Studiorum, S. Orsola-Malpighi Hospital, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

INTRODUCTION: Pancreatic cancer resection in the elderly population represents a challenging problem. In addition, a chronological age for the “elderly” is lacking. The aim of the present review was to assess the safety and feasibility of major pancreatic tumor resection in elderly patients, considering different age cut-offs (≥70; ≥75 and ≥80 years old).
EVIDENCE ACQUISITION: A search was conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, on the PubMmed/MEDLINE database. The population analyzed included elderly patients undergoing pancreatic resection for pancreatic cancer as compared with younger patients to evaluate morbidity, mortality, clinically relevant postoperative pancreatic fistula, delayed gastric emptying, post-pancreatectomy hemorrhage, length of stay, overall survival, and disease-free survival.
EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS: The results of each study were reported using Risk Ratio (RR), Odds Ratio (OR) or Mean Difference and their P value. Twenty-four studies were included in the review for a total of 33,896 cases of which 25,937 (76.5%) were young people and 7378 (23.5%) were elderly people. The elderly age cut-off was mainly defined as ≥70 years old. Regarding the age cut-off ≥70 years old, the results comparing elderly patients (≥70 years) and younger patients (<70 years) were similar; for the age cut-offs ≥75 and ≥80 years old. Higher mortality and morbidity rates were found in the studies due to the fact that patients ≥75 and ≥80 years or older more frequently had major comorbidities than the younger patients.
CONCLUSIONS: This review showed that 1) elderly age cut-off has to be considered as ≥ 70 years old, and 2) age alone is not a contraindication for pancreatic cancer resection. However, elderly patients were frailer and more vulnerable than younger patients, and therefore required a careful preoperative assessment.

KEY WORDS: Pancreatic neoplasms; Aged; Surgical oncology