RT Journal
A1 Moriya T, Traverso L
T1 THe “malignant truth” about the recurrence of pancreatic intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms—reply
JF Archives of Surgery
JO Archives of Surgery
YR 2012
FD October 1
VO 147
IS 10
SP 977
OP 980
DO 10.1001/archsurg.2012.2312
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/archsurg.2012.2312
AB 
They questioned why we chose to compare 2 groups: benign (adenoma and borderline dysplasia) vs malignant (carcinoma in situ and invasive adenocarcinoma). In our previous review study,1 we had found the comparison of benign vs malignant useful for the following reason. The average age of the patients from these 2 groups was significantly different upon diagnosis. From these 2 groups, we could best observe a significant difference of about 5 years from the younger average age of the benign cases vs the older average age of malignant cases. The time of progression for the adenoma-carcinoma sequence was best estimated with the comparison of benign vs malignant rather than with other comparisons such as noninvasive vs invasive intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm (IPMN).