The Significance of Ascites in Patients with Pancreatic Cancer: A Case-Control Study.

445 Background: Malignant ascites confers a poor prognosis in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer (PC). It is unknown if radiographic ascites in patients with localized disease is a poor prognostic factor and if this finding should be sufficient to avoid upfront local therapies. We aimed to evaluate the survival outcomes of patients with PC and ascites. Methods: Retrospective case control study with overall survival as primary outcome. Eighty newly diagnosed PC patients with ascites (case group) and 80 similar controls without ascites were collected.Cases and controls were matched on age, gender, stage, ECOG performance, surgical treatment, lymph node status and margin status. Overall survival was compared between groups with Cox proportional hazards models by stages, and with a gamma frailty term to account for the correlation between matched pairs on entire cohort. Results: The 80 matched cases included 19 with resectable disease, 9 borderline resectable, 22 locally advanced and 31 with metastatic disease. 29 patients underwent pancreaticoduodenectomy. Table 1 summarizes the overall survival. Ascites patients had higher risk of death compared to patients without ascites (conditional hazard ratio = 1.58 (95% CI: 1.11-2.27), p=0.01). Conclusions: PC patients with ascites have poor overall survival compared to patients without ascites. Even in the setting of resectable disease, survival is similar to patients with advanced disease. This data suggest that all patients with ascites regardless of disease stage should be considered for systemic chemotherapy prior to attempting local treatments. [Table: see text]