Bellvitge Hospital removes two cancers with double bypass

He Bellvitge University Hospital (Barcelona) has excised “for the first time” in Spain two pancreatic cancers with double bypass –venous and arterial– that until now were considered inoperablethey reported this Monday in a statement.

Resection of cancer of the head of the pancreas with intraoperative venous bypass implies that before starting the removal of the tumor, the provisional diversion of the blood supply is carried out with a bypass between the vein that collects blood from the gut and the vena cava and this by-pass, also known as ‘shunt’, allows the blood to continue circulating for the duration of tumor removal to prevent the intestine and liver from suffering.

A few months after a team led by the head of the Surgery Section of the General and Digestive Surgery Service of the Bellvitge Hospital and researcher at the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (Idibell), Juli Busquets, successfully performed for the first time in Spain the resection of a pancreatic tumor with an intraoperative ‘venous shunt’, two new “even more complex” cases have been performed, which have required a double venous and arterial shunt.

Pancreatic cancer resection operations using the ‘shunt’ have been possible thanks to the prior development of advanced surgical planning models, which accurately reproduce the shape and position of the tumor and the affected organs and vascular structures, so that the surgeon can use them to previously study the situation of the tumor and decide what is the best surgical strategy to follow.

The hospital is reference center in pancreatic surgery and, especially, in resection of locally advanced pancreatic tumors – the most complex type of operable tumor because it affects adjacent blood vessels – and the Hepatobiliopancreatic Surgery Unit, created more than thirty years ago, has performed more than 300 pancreatic resections in the last five years.