Impact of Smoking on Pancreatic Cancer Patients Receiving Current Chemotherapy.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Smoking may affect pharmacokinetics of chemotherapeutic agents and hemodynamics of the smokers, thereby influencing adverse events and efficacy of chemotherapy in patients with pancreatic cancer (PC). The aim of this study was to clarify how smoking totally affected patients with PC receiving current chemotherapy. METHODS: We evaluated the impact of smoking status on the performance of chemotherapy and survival in 262 patients with PC including 158 resectable and 104 unresectable PC. RESULTS: There were more male and younger patients in current smokers than in nonsmokers. In unresectable PC, current smokers had more metastatic tumors than locally advanced tumors compared with nonsmokers. In current smokers receiving chemotherapy, the baseline white blood cell count, neutrophil count, and hemoglobin concentration were significantly higher in current smokers than in nonsmokers. Furthermore, grades 3 to 4 neutropenia was observed more often in nonsmokers than smokers. On the other hand, the performance and efficacy of the planned adjuvant chemotherapy were similar between smokers and nonsmokers. More importantly, there was no significant difference in overall prognosis between smokers and nonsmokers receiving chemotherapy. CONCLUSIONS: Smoking status has no significant impact on the efficacy of current chemotherapy for both resectable and unresectable PC.