Quality of care of pancretic cancer in Nova Scotia

What is it about?

Pancreatic cancer is an aggressive malignancy with poor prognosis. Only 10-25% of patients are alive after five years if they undergo surgery that remains the only possible cure. Surgery is still associated with significant morbidity, as 40% of patients experience perioperative complications. Most of these are treatable with antibiotics or small interventions. Complications that can lead to death are less common as mortality of pancreatic surgery is less than 5% in most of the medical centers in high-income countries. Because the prognosis of pancreatic cancer has improved very little over the last decades, many pancreatic cancer patients are considered untreatable and receive care that is not optimized. Many do not undergo surgery as they are not properly referred, many do not receive chemotherapy or other treatment modalities that can improve the quality of life as well as their survival. For this reason, there is a high interest to assess the overall quality of care provided to these patients and identify the areas where the quality of care are unsatisfactory. Our group has evaluated the quality of care provided to patients with pancreatic cancer in Nova Scotia, a Canadian province located on the East coast, over a period of 10 years (2001-2011).

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Why is it important?

No previous studies have assessed the quality of care of pancreatic cancer patients in Nova Scotia. Canadian studies on the quality of care provided to patients with complex or advanced malignancies are lacking.