En bloc pancreaticoduodenectomy and right hemicolectomy to treat locally advanced right colon cancer: report of three cases.

Although colorectal tumors are fairly common surgical conditions, 5 to 12% of these tumors are locally advanced (T4 tumors) upon diagnosis. In this particular situation, the efficacy of en bloc multivisceral resection has been proven. When right-colon cancer invades the proximal duodenum or even the pancreatic head, a challenging dilemma arises due to complexity of the curative surgical procedure. Therefore, en bloc pancreaticoduodenectomy with right hemicolectomy should be performed to obtain free margins. The present study reports three cases of locally advanced right-colon cancer invading the proximal duodenum. All of these cases underwent successful en bloc pancreaticoduodenectomy plus right hemicolectomy, with no death occurrence. Long-term survival was observed in two cases (30 and 50 months). In the third case, the patient did not present any recurrence twelve months after surgical treatment. Multivisceral resection with en bloc pancreaticoduodenectomy should be considered for patients who present acceptable risk for major surgery and no distant dissemination. This approach seems justified since the length of postoperative survival is longer in radically ressected groups (R0) than in palliativelly resected groups (R1-2).