Early Drain Removal Versus Standard Drain Management After Distal Pancreatectomy (Early-Dist)

Plain-language summary

Main indications for distal pancreatectomy (DP) are pancreatic body and tail tumors including ductal adenocarcinoma, neuroendocrine tumors, and cystic neoplasms. Despite a less invasive operation with lower morbidity compared to pancreatic head surgery, DP is burdened by the occurrence of clinically-relevant postoperative pancreatic fistula (CR-POPF) in a significant proportion of patients. Drain fluid amylase (DFA) on POD 1 (postoperative day 1) \> 2,000 U/L appears as the best performing threshold to predict the occurrence of CR-POPF after distal pancreatectomy. Although there is preliminary evidence that early drain removal in the subgroup of patients with DFA1 \< 2,000 U/L may reduce POPF, no prospective study has yet evaluated the impact of an early drain removal strategy compared to standard management. The research question of this study is to evaluate to what extent early postoperative drain removal according to a validated DFA1 impact on clinically-relevant POPF rate after distal pancreatectomy in comparison to standard drain management. The primary hypothesis is that, early drain removal will result in a reduced proportion of patients experiencing grade B-C POPF according to ISGPS definition. The proposed study is a two-group, assessor-blind, randomized trial. Participants will be randomly assigned with a 1:1 ratio into one of two groups: (1) standard drain management or (2) early drain removal strategy. In this study adults (\>18 years) patients with pancreatic body or tail diseases planned for distal pancreatectomy with or without splenectomy will be enrolled.The primary outcome is the POPF at 90 days after surgery, defined as grade B or C POPF according to ISGPS definition. Participants will be asked to complete some questionnaires in order to assess their general health status, and they will be evaluated at time of hospital admission, at 15 days, at 30 days after surgery (via telephone follow-up), and at 90 days after surgery (via telephone follow-up).

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