Survival and Description of Care for Patients With Degenerate Vaterian Ampulloma

Plain-language summary

A Vater's ampulloma is a rare digestive tumour which accounts for under 1% of all digestive tumours. The only curative treatment is complete excision (surgical or endoscopic) of the lesions which is possible in 80% of cases , with or without adjuvant treatment. The reference radical treatment is cephalic duodenopancreatectomy (CDP). The indication for adjuvant treatment is still debated: in view of the aggressive nature of the disease and the high recurrence rate, it would appear appropriate to offer adjuvant treatment, although several studies have failed to find any benefit on survival with post-operative radio-chemotherapy, the most widely studied treatment at present, compared to excision alone. At present there are no phase II studies specifically examining medical treatment of degenerated, inoperable Vater's ampullomas. Some groups propose chemotherapies with 5-FU or gemcitabine, analogous to the treatments used for intestinal, pancreatic or biliary tumours, although neither one has been shown to date to be superior to the other, nor have decision-making criteria been clearly established.In conclusion, a national cohort study is proposed to undertake a prospective analysis of the outcome of all patients treated for ampullary adenocarcinoma (particularly survival without recurrence and prognostic indicators for excised tumours and the duration of disease control for tumours treated with palliative chemotherapy). The treatment methods will be left to the free choice of the investigator and all patients may be included, regardless of stage of their disease. In this study, freezing of tumour fragments is encouraged, as this cohort will be supplemented by a later biological study. In order to recruit sufficient patient numbers, the study will be based on participation of the cooperative groups involved in the management of digestive cancers.

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