Pancreas Cancer and More!: A Decision Analysis Driven Retrospective Analysis of Outcomes of Elderly Patients with Pancreatic Cancer

Presenter: Caroline Rieser (Advisor: Dr. David Bartlett)

The numbers of 'zeros and ones' recorded by any institution, let alone UPMC, is mind boggling. And yet, little if any determination was made a priori of how to record or use these data so as to improve health and disease. Dr. Rieser will highlight the profound improvements in patient care and facilitation of decision-making that can be yielded when we learn how to use this wealth of data.

Dr. Rieser will focus her talk on treatment decisions for patients with resectable pancreatic cancer and the ongoing debate between surgery first and neoadjuvant options. Her first project uses a Markov decision analysis approach to examine the deciding variables for determining optimal treatment in a typical PDAC patient with resectable disease. She then examines the specific case of elderly patients (>70 y/o) with resectable pancreatic cancer and uses that as an impetus to examine our own (i.e., UPMC) 10-year experience with this cohort. And in conclusion, " for fun", she will present her work on prediction of pathologic pneumatosis intestinalis (PI) based upon CT scan and clinical characteristics at time of presentation.