The prospective of laparoscopic pancreaticoduodenectomy for cancer management

Laparoscopic pancreaticoduodenectomy (LPD) is an extremely challenging surgery. First described in 1994, LPD has been gaining a favorable position in the majority of pancreatic surgery. Now, LPD is world wide accepted. A literature search was conducted in PubMed, and only papers written in English containing more than 26 publications of LPD were selected. Papers in distal and robotic pancreatic procedure were not included in the review of a total of 222 LPD publications. The total number of patients analyzed was 1,082 from 25 articles and the largest series. Six of these studies came from the United States, 1 from France, 5 from South Korea, and 1 from India, 2 from Japan, 5 from China, 1 from Italy, 1 Germany, 2 from UK. The overall pancreatic fistula rate was 20.5%. The overall conversion rate was 10.4%. LPD seems to be a valid alternative to the standard open approach with similar technical and oncological results. LPD is a safe procedure, providing many of the advantages typically associated with laparoscopic procedures. We expect this operation to continue to gain in popularity as well as be offered in increasingly more complex cases. In future studies, it will be beneficial to look further at the oncologic outcome data of LPD including survival.