Aims and background: Primary duodenal adenocarcinoma is a rare tumor with a poorly defined natural history and prognostic factors. It presents with nonspecific symptoms, and for this reason the diagnosis is often delayed. It is a serious problem for the surgeon because of the difficulty in obtaining an early diagnosis and standardizing basic tenets for an appropriate surgical approach. The aim of this work was to conduct a review of the literature analyzing the points most frequently debated about this pathology.
Methods and study design: A bibliographic search was carried out on the main search engines to find studies regarding duodenal adenocarcinoma, published in English, from January 1992 to January 2007.
Results: A total of 19 articles was selected. Results concerning symptoms, location of the tumor, diagnostic examinations, surgical treatment, histopathology of the tumor, survival and follow-up were obtained and discussed.
Conclusions: All patients who are medically fit to undergo surgery should be given the option of aggressive resection regardless of tumor size, tumor invasion or appearance of positive lymph nodes. Hopefully, an early diagnosis will correlate with improved long-term survival.