The Management of Older Adults with Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma

Abstract

Pancreatic cancer is the eleventh most common cancer, yet it is the third leading cause of mortality. It is also largely a disease of older adults, with the median age of 71 at diagnosis in the US, with <1% of diagnoses occurring prior to age 50. Current NCCN guidelines recommend surgery for localized disease, followed by adjuvant therapy and/or consideration of enrollment in a clinical trial. For metastatic disease, current guidelines recommend clinical trial enrollment or systemic chemotherapy based on results from the landmark ACCORD-11 and MPACT trials. However, these trials focused heavily on younger, more fit patients, with the ACCORD-11 trial excluding patients over age 75 and the MPACT trial having 92% of its patients with a Karnofsky performance score >80. This article summarizes the available evidence in current literature in regards to the best treatment options for older adults, who represent the majority of pancreatic cancer diagnoses.

Keywords: disease management; localized disease; metastatic disease; older adults; pancreatic adenocarcinoma.