Short-term palliative radiation for painful irresectable pancreatic cancer (PainPanc): a prospective phase 2 study

Pancreatic cancer has an extremely poor prognosis. It is the fifth leading cause of cancer death in the Netherlands with an overall 2-year survival of less than 10%. This has hardly improved over the last two decades. Less than 15% of all patients present with resectable disease. The majority of patients have locally advanced and/or metastasized disease and are treated with palliative intent.



Pain is an important symptom in pancreatic cancer and leads to a strong reduction in quality of life. At time of diagnosis, 30-40% of the patients report pain as a dominant symptom which rises to 90% shortly before death. Inadequate pain control may lead to a situation where pain becomes disabling and requires hospitalization for pain management. Therefore successful pain management is often viewed as the key management for a better quality of life. Pain management options range from pharmacologic treatment to invasive treatment such as nerve blockades. Radiation has also shown to give pain reduction, even though not much research has been done. With this study we would like to research and document the pain relief of shortcourse radiation and the effect of quality of life.

Painreduction for 67% of patients with a locally advanced or local recurrent pancreatic carcinoma through a short radiotherapy scheme
(single arm phase 2 study)

baseline, after each fraction, and at 4, 5, 7, 11, en 19 weeks after start of radiation and once per 3 months thereafter

radiotherapy 3 X 8 Gy, once per week.