Background: Many studies have confirmed that diabetes was associated with prognosis in many malignant cancer types. However, the impact of diabetes on ampullary carcinoma (AC) has not been investigated.
Methods: A total of 266 AC patients in the National Cancer Center of China between January 1998 and December 2020 were retrospectively reviewed. The postoperative complication rate, postoperative recurrence rate, and long-term survival were compared between the diabetes group and the no diabetes group.
Results: A total of 32 AC patients (12.03%) were diagnosed with diabetes before surgery. In total, 111 patients (41.73%) had one or more postoperative complications, and there was no perioperative death. There was no statistically significant difference regarding postoperative complications between the diabetes group and the no diabetes group. Altogether, 120 patients (45.11%) experienced postoperative recurrence. Multivariate analysis revealed that diabetes was an independent risk factor for the recurrence (OR: 2.384, 95% CI: 1.065-5.336, p = 0.035), OS (HR: 1.597, 95% CI: 1.005-2.537, p = 0.047), and RFS (HR: 1.768, 95% CI: 1.068-2.925, p = 0.027) in AC patients after curative pancreatoduodenectomy.
Conclusions: Diabetes may adversely affect the recurrence of patients with AC after curative pancreaticoduodenectomy, leading to an increased risk of poor prognosis in early-stage patients. Further studies involving a large sample size are needed to validate our results.
Keywords: ampullary carcinoma; diabetes; postoperative complications; recurrence; survival.