Clinicopathologic and survival analysis of resected ampullary adenocarcinoma

Introduction Ampullary adenocarcinoma (AAC) is a rare neoplasm. We sought to determine the clinicopathologic factors contributing to the overall survival (OS) and recurrence‐free (RFS) survival. Methods Patients (pts) with resected AAC were identified from 1996 to 2015 and reviewed for clinicopathologic factors and correlated with outcome. Results We identified and evaluated 106 pts diagnosed with AAC. The median age was 70.2 years (range 41–86) and 60 (56.6%) were male. Overall, 105 pts (99.1%) had a pancreaticoduodenectomy. An R0 resection was achieved in 101 (95%) pts. Median follow‐up was 19 months with a median OS of 49.3 months. Lymph node metastasis and poorly differentiated tumors adversely affected OS on multivariate analysis (MVA). Twenty patients (18.9%) developed recurrence. The median RFS was 27 months. RFS was adversely affected by lymph node count and metastasis, tumor differentiation, and histological subtype on MVA. Survival was not affected by the addition of adjuvant therapy. Retrieval of ≤12 lymph nodes and lymph node ratio ≥0.10 resulted in worse OS on Kaplan–Meier analysis. Conclusions Our data show retrieval of ≤12 nodes, involvement of nodes with AAC, moderately or poorly differentiated tumors, and pancreaticobiliary subtype adversely affected survival, while the use of adjuvant therapy demonstrated no significant benefit. J. Surg. Oncol. 2016;114:170–175. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.