Survival of pancreatic cancer patients is negatively correlated with age at diagnosis: a population-based retrospective study

Abstract

In this population-based retrospective study, we aimed to investigate the association between age at diagnosis and prognosis of pancreatic cancer (PC) patients using data from the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and the End Results database. Different factors for stratification, like race, sex, year of diagnosis, pathological grade, American Joint Committee on Cancer stage, historic stage, and tumour location, were included to compare the survival rates of patients of different age groups, and the five-year survival rate was calculated. Multivariate analysis using Cox regression was performed to control for confounder bias, and the hazard ratio was calculated. In total, 126,066 patients were enrolled in this study. The five-year PC-specific survival of patients aged 20–40 years was almost three times that of patients aged >40 years. Stratified by race, sex, year of diagnosis, pathological grade, clinical stage, and tumour location, a descending trend of survival was observed with an increase in age. On multivariate analysis, the mortality risk of PC patients aged 40–80 years was twice that of patients aged <40 years; however, patients aged >80 years had a mortality risk three times that of patients aged <40 years. The survival rate of PC patients has improved in the last few decades. Age at diagnosis is a significant and negative prognostic factor for PC, and patients diagnosed at a relatively earlier stage had the best survival.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma survival in South Australia: time trends and impact of tumour location

“…The median overall survival (7.4 months) noted in this study compares favourably with a recent nationwide report from the Netherlands (3.8 months) 3 and previous reports from England and Wales (median survival less than 6 months) 40 . The negative impact of advancing age on survival noted in this study in patients above the age of 70 years supports the finding of a threefold increase in mortality from PDAC in patients above the age of 80 years in the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology and the End Results database 41 …”

Clinical features and prognostic factors of elderly patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer: a population-based study

“…It has been widely recognized that elderly patients’ internal environment (chronic inflammation and immune system dysfunction) is more likely to induce cancer under the stimulation of carcinogens [ 8 , 9 ]. Moreover, it has been reported that age is a significant negative prognostic factor for PC [ 10 ], and the immune system of elderly patients plays a key role in the development of PC [ 11 ]. Therefore, elderly patients may represent a distinct subgroup that needs more targeted clinical management plans [ 12 ].…”

The value of lymph node ratio and total number of lymph nodes examined for resected pancreatic signet ring cell carcinoma: a retrospective cohort study

“…According to the report of epidemiology of pancreatic cancer [30],pancreatic cancer is mostly diagnosed in elderly individuals aged >70 years. Wang et al [31] proposed that age at diagnosis is a negatively independent factor to pancreatic cancer patients and early diagnosis means very important signi cance to improve the survival of pancreatic cancer patients .In one case report, Natesh et al [15] found that poorly differentiated signet ring cell carcinoma of pancreas was delayed because of incorrect diagnosis as chronic pancreatitis and patients died in 8 weeks after diagnosis, which means early diagnosis is important to the physician and the patient. In our analysis, the median age of pancreatic SRCC was 67 years (IQR,58.3-75.0 years),similarly to the previous literature.…”