Surgical outcome of adenosquamous carcinoma of the pancreas

Adenosquamous carcinoma is rare, accounting for 3%-4% of all pancreatic carcinoma cases. These tumors are characterized by the presence of variable proportions of mucin-producing glandular elements and squamous components, the latter of which should account for at least 30% of the tumor tissue. Recently, several reports have described cases of adenosquamous carcinoma of the pancreas. However, as the number of patients who undergo resection at a single institute is limited, large studies describing the clinicopathological features, therapeutic management, and surgical outcome for adenosquamous carcinoma of the pancreas are lacking. We performed a literature review of English articles retrieved from Medline using the keywords 'pancreas' and 'adenosquamous carcinoma'. Additional articles were obtained from references within the papers identified by the Medline search. Our subsequent review of the literature revealed that optimal adjuvant chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy regimens for adenosquamous carcinoma of the pancreas have not been established, and that curative surgical resection offers the only chance for long-term survival. Unfortunately, the prognosis of the 39 patients who underwent pancreatic resection for adenosquamous carcinoma was very poor, with a 3-year overall survival rate of 14.0% and a median survival time of 6.8 mo. Since the postoperative prognosis of adenosquamous carcinoma of the pancreas is currently worse than that of pancreatic adenocarcinoma, new adjuvant chemotherapies and/or radiation techniques should be investigated as they may prove indispensible to the improvement of surgical outcomes.