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Quality of life in patients with pancreatic cancer during neoadjuvant chemotherapy using gemcitabine and bevazizumab: A pilot study.

330 Background: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (nCT) for pancreatic cancer is increasing due to the fact that 75% of patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer are borderline or non-resectable. The use of antibodies may improve the efficacy of nCT. The influence on quality of life is not clear.


METHODS
We prospectively evaluated quality of life in patients comparing nCT with gemcitabine (1000mg/m2; 1, 8, 15 for 4 cycles) and bevacizumab (nCT-GA; n=8) with patients with (aCT-G, n=15) or without adjuvant gemcitabine (noCT; n=14) using the EORTC-QLQ PAN26 modul. We also included patients operated due to benign disease as a control group (B; n=15). Quality of life was measured before as well as 3-7 months after surgery.


RESULTS
52 patients were included in the study. There was no difference between the four groups before surgery in overall quality of life sores (p=0.280). Overall quality of life was also not impaired three months after surgery in any group (nCT-GA: 45 ± 23 vs. 65 ± 23 p=0.196; aCT-G: 42 ± 16 vs. 58 ± 22 p=0.104; noCT: 42 ± 16 vs. 49 ± 24 p=0.462; B: 60 ± 22 vs. 58 ± 21 p=0.894). There were no statistic significant differences between the four groups three to seven months after surgery (p=0.578). Similar function scores such as appetite loss, digestive symptoms or others did not differ significantly.


CONCLUSIONS
Chemotherapy with or without bevacizumab seems to be well tolerated. The similar appetite score in patients comparing malignant (±chemotherapy) with benign disease is of importance as weight loss is a bad prognostic marker in pancreatic cancer patients. Thus, chemotherapy with or without bevacizumab may be safe in this respect. Further prospective trials with larger patient numbers are needed. [Table: see text].