Impact of prolonged surgical waiting time on cancer-specific mortality in stage I-II pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma patients who received radical resection

Background: The impact of prolonged surgical waiting time (SWT) on the prognosis of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) remains controversial. This study aimed to explore the impact of prolonged SWT on PDAC-specific mortality (PSM).

Methods: The data of patients with stage I-II primary PDAC who received radical resection were obtained from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database. The trends analysis was performed to explore the association between the year of diagnosis and SWT. The Fine-Gray multivariate competing risk analysis was performed to determine the impact of prolonged SWT on PSM.

Results: A total of 8,562 patients were included in this study. In general, SWT had an increasing trend from 2007 to 2017. Multivariate survival analysis showed that SWT of ≥1 month and <2 months was not associated with PSM, while SWT of ≥2 months and <4 months was associated with a lower risk of PSM.

Conclusions: We found that prolonged SWT does not affect or worsen PSM of patients with stage I-II PDAC who underwent successful radical resection. Our findings offer useful evidence about the association between prolonged SWT and PSM, which may relieve patients' and doctors' psychological stress related to delayed surgery to some extent.