Pancreatic cancer: longer survival with combined treatment

For locally advanced pancreatic cancer, cryoablation plus drug treatment was linked to longer median survival than drug treatment alone, but the result does not prove benefit.

• Among 186 patients, median survival was 22.1 months with combined treatment, versus 17.8 months with drug treatment alone.
• Cryoablation alone had median survival of 18.7 months; nearly all patients had marked pain relief after the procedure.

Treatment was not randomized, so patients receiving combined treatment may have differed from those receiving drugs alone. The findings cannot show that cryoablation caused longer survival.