Preoperative CT Assessment of Portal Vein Contact Length Predicts Poor Prognosis in Resectable Pancreatic Head Cancer.

Authors

Shingo Kozono, Takaaki Tatsuguchi, Atsushi Fujii, Hirotaka Kuga, Keisuke Hirahata, Yuzo Shimokawa, Masayuki Hijioka, Masato Sakamoto, Sadafumi Tamiya, Toru Nakano

Published in

Journal of gastrointestinal cancer. Volume 57. Issue 1. Jul 16, 2026. Epub Jul 16, 2026.

Abstract

To investigate whether preoperative computed tomography (CT)-based tumor-portal/superior mesenteric vein (PV/SMV) contact angle and contact length predict pathological venous invasion and refine prognostic stratification in anatomically resectable pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (R-PDAC).
We retrospectively reviewed 108 patients who underwent upfront pancreaticoduodenectomy without neoadjuvant chemotherapy for pancreatic head PDAC, including 101 anatomically resectable cases and 7 borderline resectable cases with PV involvement (BR-PV). Tumor-PV/SMV contact angle and contact length were measured on multidetector CT. Their associations with pathological PV/SMV invasion, PV/SMV resection, and overall survival (OS) were analyzed.
Both contact angle and contact length predicted pathological venous invasion, with optimal cutoff values of 90° for angle (AUC = 0.86) and 15 mm for length (AUC = 0.84), and both were significantly associated with pathological venous invasion and PV/SMV resection (all p < 0.001). In the subgroup with R-PDAC, however, only contact length provided meaningful prognostic stratification. Patients with contact length ≥ 15 mm had significantly worse OS than those with contact length < 15 mm (p = 0.0032) or no contact (p < 0.001), and their survival was comparable to that of BR-PV patients (p = 0.8548). In multivariable analysis, contact length ≥ 15 mm remained an independent adverse prognostic factor (HR 2.79, 95% CI 1.64-4.73, p < 0.001).
Preoperative CT-based assessment of tumor-PV/SMV contact length may serve as a practical marker for identifying a high-risk subgroup within R-PDAC and may help refine selection of patients for neoadjuvant treatment.

PMID:
42461335
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 17 Jul 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.