The role of somatostatin in 67 consecutive pancreatectomies: a randomized clinical trial

Anastasios Katsourakis¹, Louiza Oikonomou², Efthimios Chatzitheoklitos¹, George Noussios³, Michael Pitiakoudis⁴, Aleksandros Polychronidis⁴, Konstantinos Simopoulos⁴, Antonia Sioga^2
1Surgical Department of "Agios Dimitrios" General Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece; ²Department of Histology and Embryology, School of Medicine, "Aristotelian" University of Thessaloniki, Greece; ³Laboratory of Sports Medicine of Department of Physical Education (Serres), "Aristotelian" University of Thessaloniki, Greece; ⁴Department of Surgery, School of Medicine, "Democritian" University of Thrace, Greece

Background: Somatostatin has been found to be effective in the prevention of postoperative complications in pancreatic surgery. It can inhibit the pancreatic secretions that, quite often, are responsible for complications during the postoperative period.
Methods: We randomized 67 patients in 2 groups. In the study group (n = 35), somatostatin was administered 30 minutes prior to surgery as well as intraoperatively and postoperatively. No medication was given to the control group (n = 32). Biopsies were taken and processed for electron microscopy and ultrastructural morphometric analysis.
Results: Administration of somatostatin reduced the exocrine granule number, and the patients suffered from fewer postoperative complications.
Conclusions: Somatostatin reduces granule number and size of pancreatic cells, which can partially explain the prophylactic effect of the drug on early complications of pancreatic surgery, and which is confirmed by the clinical findings.

Keywords: electron microscopy, pancreatic resection, somatostatin, complication, histological findings